Stage Motion Paper Published in M&M

Precise movement is essential to self-driving laboratories, as even small errors will rapidly grow during experimental campaigns. Led by Kevin Fiedler, our new paper in Microscopy and Microanalysis describes a general approach to assess microscope stage movement. We discuss current limitations and propose developments needed to usher in autonomous experiments.

From the abstract:

Precise control is an essential and elusive quality of emerging self-driving transmission electron microscopes (TEMs). It is widely understood these instruments must be capable of performing rapid, high-volume, and arbitrary movements for practical self-driving operation. However, stage movements are difficult to automate at scale, owing to mechanical instability, hysteresis, and thermal drift. Such difficulties pose major barriers to artificial intelligence-directed microscope designs that require repeatable, precise movements. To guide design of emerging instruments, it is necessary to understand the behavior of existing mechanisms to identify rate limiting steps for full autonomy. Here, we describe a general framework to evaluate stage motion in any TEM. We define metrics to evaluate stage degrees of freedom, propose solutions to improve performance, and comment on fundamental limits to automated experimentation using present hardware.

Download the open access paper here.