{
  "abstract": "Self-driving laboratories (SDLs) are rapidly outgrowing the single-instrument prototype, scaling into multi-instrument and multi-site platforms that run autonomous discovery across chemistry, materials science, biotechnology, pharmaceutical re-search and adjacent domains. What now decides whether an SDL can scale, share its integrations and federate experiments is no longer the algorithms or the robots, but the software layer that orchestrates heterogeneous devices. Today that layer is the bottleneck: a fast-growing ecosystem of open-source orchestrators in which most have built device integration on their own bespoke conventions instead of adopting a formally governed standard. The result is predictable and costly. Integrations do not transfer between laboratories, orchestrators cannot interoperate and many new SDLs rebuild their device-control layer from scratch. Crucially, this is an engineering coordination problem, not a fundamental scientific one and therefore among the most tractable bottlenecks in autonomous science. We map the device-integration standards landscape onto the open-source orchestrator ecosystem, compare the leading options and give scenario-driven guidance on when to use each. We then translate the requirements of autonomous operation into a concrete deliverable: a set of testable engineering criteria and a weighted procurement scorecard that defines an autonomous-ready control interface and gives institutional buyers the leverage to demand it; these requirements do not change as orchestration turns agentic: whether an instrument is driven by a program or by a language-model agent through a model-facing protocol, it is only as safe and reliable as the interface it exposes. Adopted at scale, these requirements turn device integration from a burden repaid lab by lab into shared infrastructure,",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Acceleration Consortium, 700 University Ave, Toronto, Canada, M7A 2S4",
    "UniteLabs GmbH",
    "School of Computer Science",
    "Carnegie Mellon University",
    "Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, 144 College St, Toronto, Canada, M5S 3M2",
    "Department of Mechanical Engineering",
    "Boston University",
    "Division of Materials Science & Engineering",
    "Physics Department",
    "Department of Energy Conversion and Storage",
    "Technical University of Denmark",
    "Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, King’s College London, 150 Stamford Street, UK, SE1 9NH",
    "AMOLF, Science Park 104, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1098",
    "Merck KGaA, Frankfurter Str. 250, Darmstadt, Germany, 64293",
    "Data Science and Learning Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Lemont, IL, USA, 60439-4837",
    "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA, USA, 94550",
    "Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Korea, 08826",
    "Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM, Richard-Willstaetter-Str. 11, Berlin, Germany, 12489",
    "RheinMain University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Unter den Eichen 5, Wiesbaden, Germany, 65195",
    "School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE",
    "Nanyang Technological University (NTU",
    "Department of Materials Science and Engineering",
    "University of Tennessee",
    "Air Force Research Laboratory",
    "DCS Corp, 4027 Colonel Glenn Hwy., Suite. 210, Dayton, OH, USA, 45431",
    "School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, University Avenue, Glasgow, UK, G12 8QQ",
    "Swiss Cat+ West Hub",
    "Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL",
    "Iowa State University",
    "Van’t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS, University of Amsterdam (UvA, Science Park 904, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1098 XH",
    "Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS",
    "Cradle",
    "Center for the Transformation of Chemistry (CTC, Puschstraße 6b, Leipzig, Germany, 04103",
    "Laboratory of Chemical Artificial Intelligence",
    "National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Catalysis, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL",
    "National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology (AIST",
    "Process Chemistry & Catalysis",
    "Hoffmann-La Roche AG",
    "National Research Council, 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC, USA, 20001",
    "Center for Basic Research on Materials, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS, 1-2-1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, 305-0047"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 48,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Willi Gottstein",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6502-1393"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Lukas Bromig"
    },
    {
      "name": "Matthias Arnold"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2,
        3
      ],
      "name": "Sina Barazandeh"
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    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        4
      ],
      "name": "Joseph S Brown"
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    {
      "affs": [
        5,
        6,
        7,
        8
      ],
      "name": "Keith A. Brown"
    },
    {
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        9,
        10
      ],
      "name": "Ivano E. Castelli"
    },
    {
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        11
      ],
      "name": "Patrick Courtney"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        12
      ],
      "name": "Basita Das"
    },
    {
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        13
      ],
      "name": "Martin Fitzner"
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    {
      "affs": [
        14
      ],
      "name": "Tobias Ginsburg"
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      "affs": [
        15
      ],
      "name": "Aldair E. Gongora"
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    {
      "affs": [
        16
      ],
      "name": "Sang Soo Han"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        17
      ],
      "name": "Annica Heyne"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        18
      ],
      "name": "Georg Hinkel"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        19,
        20
      ],
      "name": "Kedar Hippalgaonkar"
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        21,
        22
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      "name": "Sergei V. Kalinin"
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        23,
        24
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      "name": "Nicholas Kleiner"
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        25
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      "name": "Christian Knittl-Frank"
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        2,
        3
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      "name": "Jose Lugo-Martinez"
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      "affs": [
        23
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      "name": "Benji Maruyama"
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      "affs": [
        26,
        27
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      "name": "Pascal Miéville"
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    {
      "affs": [
        5,
        28
      ],
      "name": "Ankush Kumar Mishra"
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    {
      "affs": [
        29
      ],
      "name": "Timothy Noël"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        17
      ],
      "name": "Ozlem Ozcan"
    },
    {
      "name": "Noah Paulson"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        17
      ],
      "name": "Ilja Porohovoj"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Mark Z. Porter"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        30
      ],
      "name": "Zekun Ren"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        31
      ],
      "name": "Harmen M. van Rossum"
    },
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      "affs": [
        17
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      "name": "Bastian Ruehle"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        32
      ],
      "name": "Samuel Vitor Saraiva"
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    {
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        29
      ],
      "name": "Elia Savino"
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    {
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        33,
        27,
        34
      ],
      "name": "Philippe Schwaller"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        35
      ],
      "name": "Woosuck Shin"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        33,
        27,
        36,
        37
      ],
      "name": "Joshua W. Sin"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        32
      ],
      "name": "Eric T. Sletten"
    },
    {
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        23,
        38
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      "name": "Arthur Sloan"
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        17
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      "name": "Tomasz M. Stawski"
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        14
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      "name": "Casey Stone"
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        39
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      "name": "Ryo Tamura"
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        25
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      "name": "Dean Thomas"
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        9,
        10
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      "name": "Tejs Vegge"
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        23
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      "name": "Robert Waelder"
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        0
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      "name": "Ilya Yakavets"
    },
    {
      "name": "Hyuk Jun Yoo"
    },
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      "affs": [
        39
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      "name": "Naruki Yoshikawa"
    },
    {
      "name": "Sergio Pablo-García"
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  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2x2bqkxsqys16.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.26434/chemrxiv.15009990/v1",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "2x2bqkxsqys16",
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  "landing_url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009990/v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "1802|Scientific Computing and Data Management"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7220677527",
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-06",
  "publisher": "American Chemical Society (ACS)",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2x2bqkxsqys16.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:22Z",
      "native_id": "10.26434/chemrxiv.15009990",
      "source": "chemrxiv",
      "url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009990/v2"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "chemistry",
      "origin": "source:chemrxiv",
      "subfield": "general"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Talking to instruments: device-integration standards for self-driving laboratories",
  "title_text": "Talking to instruments: device-integration standards for self-driving laboratories",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:22Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2x2bqkxsqys16",
  "venue": "ChemRxiv",
  "versions": []
}