WO2023088950A1

WO2023088950A1 - Method for optimizing handlers operation in a laboratory system or device

Info

Publication number: WO2023088950A1
Application number: PCT/EP2022/082109
Authority: WO
Inventors: Alan Furlan; Raymond Minder; Alexander Meier; Florian Zapf
Original assignee: F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ag; Roche Diagnostics Gmbh; Roche Molecular Systems, Inc.
Priority date: 2021-11-18
Filing date: 2022-11-16
Publication date: 2023-05-25

Abstract

A method for optimizing handlers operation in a laboratory system or device comprising at least two handlers movably arranged within the system or device in a shared area, and a control unit for controlling the operation of the at least two handlers comprising the following steps: defining for each of the handlers a task, receiving a first operation schedule, the operation schedule comprising a sequence of task to be performed by the handlers, starting operation of the handlers according to the received operation schedule, receiving a second operation schedule, creating an updated operation schedule, and continuing operation of the handlers according to the updated operation schedule.

Description

Method for optimizing handlers operation in a laboratory system or device

Field of the Invention

The invention relates to method for optimizing handlers operation in a laboratory system or device. The invention further relates to a laboratory system or device with an implemented method for optimizing handlers operation. The invention further relates to a computer program product comprising instructions to cause a laboratory system or device to execute the method for optimizing handlers operation and to a computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon said computer program product.

Background

Actual laboratory systems or devices comprise a plurality of robotic arms, herein referred to as handlers, for performing different tasks such handling samples or consumables, transferring samples or consumables to different processing stations of the system or device, to transfer/provide fluids from/to the device, etc. In order to reduce the footprint of such a laboratory system or device, the different handlers are operated with the same area. On one hand, operational security of the laboratory system or device is a key feature, but on the other hand, there is the desire of increasing the throughput of the known system or devices by allowing simultaneous operation of the handlers within the system or device. In known systems or devices, this is performed by defining different areas of operation of the handlers. As an example, a first handler may be operated in an area comprising a sub-area which is only served by the first handler, called a non shared area, and a sub-area which is served also by a second handler, a so called shared area between the first and the second handler. In order to avoid collision of the first and second handler, access to the shared area is granted based on a time based schedule according to a first in-first out rule. The handler that requests access to the shared area first gets access to the shared area, after completion of the task, the shared area is free and the access to the shared area is granted to the handler next in the schedule.

A disadvantage of this approach is that it treats all access requests with the same urgency and importance. In case where highly time-critical steps have to be performed, this may lead to problems, since the process may be delayed by access requests pending that are related to non time-critical steps.

It is therefore aim of the present invention to provide a method for optimizing the operation of handlers in a shared area of a laboratory system or device in order to increase the throughput of the system or device while at the same time ensuring an high operational security of the system or device.

The problem is solved by a method for optimizing handlers operation and a laboratory system or device with such an implemented method according to the independent claims.

As used in the following, the terms “have”, “comprise” or “include” or any arbitrary grammatical variations thereof are used in a non-exclusive way. Thus, these terms may both refer to a situation in which, besides the feature introduced by these terms, no further features are present in the entity described in this context and to a situation in which one or more further features are present. As an example, the expressions “A has B”, “A comprises B” and “A includes B” may both refer to a situation in which, besides B, no other element is present in A (i.e. a situation in which A solely and exclusively consists of B) and to a situation in which, besides B, one or more further elements are present in entity A, such as element C, elements C and D or even further elements.

Further, it shall be noted that the terms “at least one”, “one or more” or similar expressions indicating that a feature or element may be present once or more than once typically will be used only once when introducing the respective feature or element. In the following, in most cases, when referring to the respective feature or element, the expressions “at least one” or “one or more” will not be repeated, non-withstanding the fact that the respective feature or element may be present once or more than once.

Further, as used in the following, the terms "preferably", "more preferably", "particularly", "more particularly", "specifically", "more specifically" or similar terms are used in conjunction with optional features, without restricting alternative possibilities. Thus, features introduced by these terms are optional features and are not intended to restrict the scope of the claims in any way. The invention may, as the skilled person will recognize, be performed by using alternative features. Similarly, features introduced by "in an embodiment of the invention" or similar expressions are intended to be optional features, without any restriction regarding alternative embodiments of the invention, without any restrictions regarding the scope of the invention and without any restriction regarding the possibility of combining the features introduced in such way with other optional or non-optional features of the invention.

According to the method for optimizing handlers operation in a laboratory system or device of the present invention, the system or device comprises at least two handlers movably arranged within the system or device in a shared area and a control unit for controlling the operation of the at least two handlers.

The method of the present invention comprises the following steps.

For each of the handlers, a task comprising at least a task priority and a duration of the task is defined. As an example, which will be used below for further explaining the present invention, a task may be supplying the system or device with consumables necessary for operation within the shared area. Another task may be the pipetting of fluids necessary for operations within the shared area. Again, another task may be the transfer of objects from a non shared area to the shared area or vice-versa. A completion time for the task is defined as duration of the task. In addition, the duration of the task may include a buffer time to account for variations in the process. The task may be defined by the control unit itself or may be preferably provided to the control unit by a connected device or storage medium.

The control unit then receives a first operation schedule comprising a sequence of tasks to be performed by the handlers for a given batch run. The operation schedule may comprise tasks to be performed by the first handler and the second handler in a given sequence, and the tasks may be performed directly one after another or a given time, e.g. for a reaction to take place, may be defined between a task and the next task to be performed.

A batch run is meant within the meaning of the present invention as being the necessary steps to be taken/performed by the system or device for executing an analysis of samples present in the shared or non shared area, preferably on a multi well test plate. The batch run may include only one assay to be performed or a plurality of assays to be performed on the same multi well plate. The control unit then starts the operation of the handlers according to the received operation schedule.

The control unit then receives a second operation schedule comprising a sequence of task related to the second operation schedule to be performed by the handlers, preferably for a batch run different from the first batch run. In this case, the problem cited above arises, since the tasks of the first and second operation schedule may refer to different handlers that have to be operated in the shared area. However, in order to avoid collision and at the same time increase the throughput of the system or device, the method according to the present invention creates an updated operation schedule comprising a sequence of tasks belonging to the first and the second operation schedule to be performed by the handlers, wherein access to the shared area is granted to one handler at time according to the updated operation schedule.

Within a given operation schedule, the sequence of the tasks remains the same, but tasks of the first and the second operation schedule may be queued one after the other based on the task priority and the duration of the task.

Preferably, the task priority comprises at least first priority ranking, a second priority ranking and a third priority ranking. The first priority ranking is preferably a high priority ranking, meaning that the task has to be performed at a given time along a time axis of the operation schedule. The second priority ranking is preferably a medium priority ranking, meaning that the task may be shifted within the updated operation schedule, but preferably within a given time interval or dependent on other tasks. The third priority ranking is preferably a low priority ranking, meaning that the task may be performed at any time in the sequence and/or is not dependent from a subsequent or previous task.

In this regard, the task is preferably defined also by a dependency to a subsequent or previous task of the same operation schedule. As an example, a time window between two tasks of the same operation schedule may not exceed and/or fall below a given time. Therefore, a dependency is created in order to avoid problems in the operation schedule. It is to be noted that according to the present invention, a subsequent or previous task may refer to any task of the same operation schedule and not necessarily to the task scheduled directly upstream or downstream of the task.

It is also further preferred to define for every task a task area, the task area being a region of the shared area where the handler is operated during the task. This can be useful to further improve the method in the case where a task is only performed in a portion or region of the shared area. In this case, the control unit could allow the two handlers to be operated at the same time within the shared area if the task area of a task does not overlap with the task area of the other task.

It should be clear that the updated operation schedule is determined by the control unit based on the first operation schedule as a backbone, as long as tasks belonging to the first operation schedule have to be performed. Also, the updated operation schedule may include tasks belonging to a first, a second, a third, etc. operation schedules. In this case, the updated operation schedule is determined by the control unit based on the first operation schedule as a backbone, as long as tasks belonging to the first operation schedule have to be performed, and tasks of the second operation schedule are included between the tasks of the first operation schedule as soon as the control unit receives the second operation schedule. The tasks of the third operation schedule are included between the tasks of the first and second operation schedule (updated operation schedule) as soon as the control unit receives the third operation schedule and so on.

The updated operation schedule is determined by the control unit based on the first operation schedule as soon as the second operation schedule is received. The control unit first determines if a task of the second operation schedule based on the task priority. In addition, the duration of the task, a dependency to a subsequent or previous task and/or a task area may be taken into consideration when determining the updated operation schedule.

Preferably, a task with a first priority rank is always performed and therefore gets directly, or after a given time delay, to the shared area.

To further increase optimization of the handler operation, for a predetermined task priority, the task is fragmented into a plurality of sub tasks, each sub tasks being defined by a sub task duration. This is preferably done for tasks belonging to the third priority ranking, since fragmenting into shorter sub tasks may increase the chance that non time-critical sub tasks may be performed in a free time slot between two tasks with an higher task priority ranking.

However described above with respect to the method according to the present invention, the description applies accordingly to the system or device, the computer program product and the computer storage media according to the present invention.

Short description of the figures

Fig. 1 depicts a schematic representation of operation schedules according to the present invention.

Detailed description of the figures

The invention will be described now by way of a preferred embodiment in connection with the drawing.

In the upper part of figure 1, an operation schedule 1 is schematically shown. The operation schedule 1 comprises tasks T 1.1, T2.1, T3.1 and T4.1, wherein the tasks T 1.1, T2.1 and T.3.1 are scheduled directly one after another, while after the task T3.1 an idle time period A. l and after task T4.1 and idle time period B.1 is scheduled. The tasks T.1.1 and T2.1 have a first priority ranking, task T3.1 has a second priority ranking and task T4.1 has a third priority ranking. Each task is also defined by a duration of the task, represented schematically by the width of the task building blocks.

During operation of the system according to the operation schedule 1 a second operation schedule 2 is received at a time t while the system is performing task T1.1. The operation schedule 2 comprises the same tasks as the operation schedule 1 with the same priority ranking, however, the tasks being referred to as T1.2, T2.2, T3.2 and T4.2, with idle times A.2 and B.2.

The control unit of the system therefore starts to create an updated operation schedule 3 to optimize the handlers operation. The control unit retrieves the priority of each of the tasks from the operation schedule 1 and 2. Since tasks Tl. l and T1.2 have a first priority ranking and cannot be postponed, operation is kept as originally planned in the first operation schedule 1. However, task T3.1 has a second priority rank and can be postponed. Since tasks T1.2 and T2.2 have a first priority ranking, they are queued after task T1.2 and before task T3.1. Task T3.2 is queued after task T3.1, wherein the control unit determines, based on the priority ranking of task T4.1 that the idle time A.1 can be substituted by task T3.2, therefore queuing task T4.1 after task T3.2. Accordingly, the control unit also determines based on the priority ranking of task T4.2 that the idle time A.2 can be substituted by task T4.1, therefore queuing task T4.2 after task T4.1. The newly created operation schedule 3 is therefore updated as the actual operation schedule and the system is operated according to the updated operation schedule 3, which is shown at the bottom of the figure 1.

Claims

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Claims A method for optimizing handlers operation in a laboratory system or device, the system or device comprising: at least two handlers movably arranged within the system or device in a shared area, a control unit for controlling the operation of the at least two handlers, the method comprising the following steps: defining for each of the handlers a task, the task comprising at least a task priority and a duration of the task,

- the control unit receiving a first operation schedule, the operation schedule comprising a sequence of task to be performed by the handlers for a first batch run,

- the control unit starting operation of the handlers according to the received operation schedule,

- the control unit receiving a second operation schedule for a second batch run,

- the control unit creating an updated operation schedule, the updated operation schedule comprising a sequence of tasks to be performed by the handlers, the tasks of the updated operation schedule belonging to the first and the second operation schedule, and

- the control unit continuing operation of the handlers according to the updated operation schedule. The method of claim 1, wherein the task priority comprises at least first priority ranking, a second priority ranking and a third priority ranking. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein a task is further defined by a dependency to a subsequent or previous task of the same operation schedule. The method of any of the preceding claims, wherein a task is further defined by a task area. The method according to one of the preceding claims, wherein for a predetermined task priority, the task is fragmented into a plurality of sub tasks, each sub tasks being defined by a sub task duration. -9- A laboratory system or device, comprising: at least two handlers movably arranged within the system or device in a shared area, a control unit for controlling the operation of the at least two handlers, wherein for each of the handlers a task, the task comprising at least a task priority and a duration of the task, is defined and provided to the control unit, the control unit being configured to: receive a first operation schedule, the operation schedule comprising a sequence of task to be performed by the handlers for a first batch run, start operation of the handlers according to the received operation schedule, receive a second operation schedule for a second batch run, create an updated operation schedule, the updated operation schedule comprising a sequence of tasks to be performed by the handlers, the tasks of the updated operation schedule belonging to the first and the second operation schedule, and continue operation of the handlers according to the updated operation schedule. The system or device of claim 6, wherein the task priority comprises at least first priority ranking, a second priority ranking and a third priority ranking. The system or device of claim 7, wherein a task is further defined by a dependency to a subsequent or previous task of the same operation schedule. The system or device of any of the claims 6 to 8, wherein a task is further defined by an task area. The system or device of any of the claims 6 to 9, wherein for a predetermined task priority, the task is fragmented into a plurality of sub tasks, each sub tasks being defined by a sub task duration. A computer program product comprising instructions to cause the system or device according to any one of claims 6 to 10 to execute the steps of the method according to any one of claims 1 to 6. A computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon the computer program product of claim 11.