A Multi-Agent System for the automated handling of experimental protocols in biological laboratories

Software-based Laboratory Information Management Systems can handle samples, plates, instruments, users, potentially up to the automation of whole workflows. One frustrating element of this predicament is that Life Sciences laboratory protocols are normally expressed in natural languages and thus are scarcely amenable to real automation. We want to defeat this major limitation by way of a project combining Model Driven Engineering, Workflows, Ontologies and Multiagent systems (MAS). This paper describes the latter ingredient. Our MAS has been implemented with JADE and WADE to automatically interpret and execute a structured representation of laboratory protocols expressed in XPDL+OWL. Our work has recently been tested on a real test case and will shortly be deployed in the field.