title: The automation of science.
abstract: The basis of science is the hypothetico-deductive method and the recording of experiments in sufficient detail to enable reproducibility. We report the development of Robot Scientist "Adam," which advances the automation of both. Adam has autonomously generated functional genomics hypotheses about the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and experimentally tested these hypotheses by using laboratory automation. We have confirmed Adam's conclusions through manual experiments. To describe Adam's research, we have developed an ontology and logical language. The resulting formalization involves over 10,000 different research units in a nested treelike structure, 10 levels deep, that relates the 6.6 million biomass measurements to their logical description. This formalization describes how a machine contributed to scientific knowledge.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, SY23 3DB, UK. rdk@aber.ac.uk
authors.forename: Ross D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: King
authors.forename: Jem
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rowland
authors.forename: Stephen G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Oliver
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: Wayne
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Aubrey
authors.forename: Emma
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Byrne
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Liakata
authors.forename: Magdalena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Markham
authors.forename: Pinar
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pir
authors.forename: Larisa N
authors.initials: LN
authors.lastname: Soldatova
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sparkes
authors.forename: Kenneth E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Whelan
authors.forename: Amanda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Clare