TARMAC as a taxonomy for robot manipulation in chemistry
Abstract
Laboratory automation has benefited substantially from well-defined protocols and machine-readable representations of chemical procedures. Yet a long tail of context-dependent physical tasks, including setup, adjustment, and cleanup, continues to require manual intervention or bespoke robotic implementations tailored to individual workflows and platforms. This study examines whether this apparent diversity can be organized into a structured and reusable action space. TARMAC ( TA xonomy for R obot MA nipulation in C hemistry), an empirical taxonomy of laboratory actions, is derived through a bottom-up analysis of instructional chemistry practice. The taxonomy comprises 18 physically meaningful primitives organized by three dimensions: wrench dependence, actuation directness, and motion periodicity. Evaluation through cross-corpus protocol decomposition and robotic instantiation addresses expressive coverage and proof-of-concept executability. Across 23 procedures, 904 of 917 manipulative steps map to the primitive set, while robotic tests instantiate 8 primitives in five tasks across four robotic configurations. Together, these results indicate that laboratory manipulation can be organized as a structured action space across the examined contexts. TARMAC therefore provides a descriptive basis for organizing and comparing manipulation requirements across experimental workflows and robotic embodiments.
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BibTeX
@article{huang2026tarmac,
title = {{TARMAC as a taxonomy for robot manipulation in chemistry}},
author = {Kefeng Huang and Alice E. Martin and Jonathon Pipe and Tianyuan Wang and Barnabas A. Franklin and Christopher S. Horbaczewskyj and Andy M. Tyrrell and Ian J. S. Fairlamb and Jihong Zhu},
journal = {Communications Chemistry},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1038/s42004-026-02249-3},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s42004-026-02249-3},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - TARMAC as a taxonomy for robot manipulation in chemistry
AU - Kefeng Huang
AU - Alice E. Martin
AU - Jonathon Pipe
AU - Tianyuan Wang
AU - Barnabas A. Franklin
AU - Christopher S. Horbaczewskyj
AU - Andy M. Tyrrell
AU - Ian J. S. Fairlamb
AU - Jihong Zhu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
JO - Communications Chemistry
DO - 10.1038/s42004-026-02249-3
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s42004-026-02249-3
AB - Laboratory automation has benefited substantially from well-defined protocols and machine-readable representations of chemical procedures. Yet a long tail of context-dependent physical tasks, including setup, adjustment, and cleanup, continues to require manual intervention or bespoke robotic implementations tailored to individual workflows and platforms. This study examines whether this apparent diversity can be organized into a structured and reusable action space. TARMAC ( TA xonomy for R obot MA nipulation in C hemistry), an empirical taxonomy of laboratory actions, is derived through a bottom-up analysis of instructional chemistry practice. The taxonomy comprises 18 physically meaningful primitives organized by three dimensions: wrench dependence, actuation directness, and motion periodicity. Evaluation through cross-corpus protocol decomposition and robotic instantiation addresses expressive coverage and proof-of-concept executability. Across 23 procedures, 904 of 917 manipulative steps map to the primitive set, while robotic tests instantiate 8 primitives in five tasks across four robotic configurations. Together, these results indicate that laboratory manipulation can be organized as a structured action space across the examined contexts. TARMAC therefore provides a descriptive basis for organizing and comparing manipulation requirements across experimental workflows and robotic embodiments.
SN - 2399-3669
ER -