Original title: New Leap in Productivity · Power of Ceyuan | Why was the world's largest biomedical "robot jungle" born in Shanghai?

Walking into Jingtai Technology, located in the southwest of Zhangjiang Robot Valley, is like walking into a jungle composed of robots. They will unscrew the test tube by themselves, quickly and smoothly complete a series of operations such as powder weighing, precise feeding, liquid transfer, magnetic stirring, etc. After the steps of each station, the logistics robot responsible for delivering chemical reagents will shuttle to send the test tubes to the next station.

This is currently the world's largest cluster of biomedical robot automatic chemical stations, and also the AI robot innovation and research platform developed by Jingtai Technology from the "first line of code". Among the top 20 multinational pharmaceutical enterprises in the world, 16 have established stable cooperation with Jingtai. In the next three to five years, Jingtai Technology's new generation automated and intelligent laboratory in Zhangjiang will provide more basic data, enabling AI to truly enable new industrialization.

On May 22, the reporter visited Zhangjiang Robot Valley with the online theme publicity activity of "the power of resources" jointly sponsored by the Cyber Information Office of the Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Party Committee for Science and Technology Work, under the guidance of the Central Cyber Information Office and the Cyber Communication Bureau, to explore the acceleration of innovation brought by Jingtai Technology to the biomedical industry by cutting-edge technologies such as quantum physics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and robot experiments.

How to coordinate the diverse chemical reactions of 100 robots

Jingtai Technology's self positioning is an innovative technology company based on quantum physics, empowered by artificial intelligence and driven by robots. In the eyes of Wang Mingtai, vice president of the company, this "robot jungle" is the core competitiveness of the company.

Jingtai Technology provides customized drug research and development services for customers. To synthesize a compound that does not exist in nature, we need to go through two steps: dry experiment is to design molecules, and wet experiment is to create it.

In chemical experiments, adding powder, adding liquid, shock and reaction are high-frequency links of compound synthesis. Jingtai Technology extracts these steps and hands them to robots for completion. For example, letting robots carry out dozens or even hundreds of experiments at a time can greatly improve the experimental flux and speed up the synthesis progress.

It is not difficult to build one or two such devices, but "large clusters". This huge laboratory space is like a busy industrial city, where more than 100 robots carry out various chemical reactions. Which step should be taken first, how to plan the material transportation route, and what to do if one of hundreds of experiments goes wrong - to coordinate these, we rely heavily on a strong scheduling system.

A large robot factory once wanted to "pack" their scheduling system and sell it to Jingtai Technology. After evaluation, the company felt that it was too far away from its own application scenario. "In fact, there is only one trick to do a good job in the scheduling system, which is to deeply understand the drug research and development experiment and understand the operation of different links in the experimental scene." Wang Mingtai said.

Therefore, this system can only be developed by ourselves. In 2019, Jingtai Technology knocked down the first line of code of the dispatching system; In 2022, the robot automation workstation will be deployed in a small scale offline; In 2023, the world's largest biomedical "robot jungle" will settle in Shanghai. Common chemical reactions with simple operation steps can be closed by the automated chemical station, and the scheduling system that closely combines with the application scenario and better understands the biomedical industry will also emerge as the times require.

Zhangjiang is a huge "garage", and even a small number of parts can be equipped

How did an enterprise focusing on AI pharmacy choose to settle in Zhangjiang Robot Valley? This is due to the atmosphere of close cooperation and the innovative and active industrial ecology in the valley. It is reported that in Robot Valley, Jingtai Technology can communicate with domestic and foreign robot arm manufacturers, including ABB, in real time, and can see them face to face within half an hour's drive.

In addition to the mechanical arm, a station needs to be equipped with particle induction module, mechanical induction module, vision module and other parts. The mechanical arm can accurately carry out microgram level experimental operations. The accurate data measured by these parts is the basis for the "brain" scheduling system to make decisions. In Zhangjiang, there are many parts matching factories.

For example, the cameras on the four corners of the station are not standard accessories, and each needs to be customized by independent mold opening. The staff of Jingtai Technology just mentioned that the founder of a machine vision company came to understand the needs in person. Before long, the camera customized by independent mold opening has been installed on the station.

Wang Mingtai sighed: "It is said that the United States has garage culture, and a radio can be built from parts stored in a garage. In fact, Zhangjiang is a large garage. After driving around, a small number of parts can be equipped."

In addition to the perfect robot industry ecology, in the process of building the station cluster, Jingtai Technology also allows the company's internal AI team and pharmaceutical team to work together in one office, which is also the reason why the world's largest biomedical "robot jungle" was born in Jingtai. Wang Mingtai said: "The technology iteration is too fast. Companies like ours have the natural advantage to match talents in both AI and pharmaceuticals. Problems and needs can be solved in real time."

Massive data feeds back AI pharmaceutical big model, and evolution iteration is "daily new"

AI will bring disruptive changes to biomedicine, which has become the consensus in the industry. At the beginning of its establishment, Jingtai Technology won the championship of Pfizer Global Blind Test Competition, and then signed a 10-year strategic cooperation with Pfizer to establish a small molecule drug simulation algorithm platform. Later, they also developed a macromolecular drug design platform. One of the strategies has a technical route similar to ChatGPT, which can generate protein drugs that meet the requirements by one click.

For AI pharmaceutical enterprises, the future competition will largely depend on who can obtain high-quality and low-cost data. At present, Jingtai Technology has gradually formed mutual positive feedback among AI, automation experiments and data.

As early as several decades ago, Pfizer had employees to record experimental data. Now, the robot station of Jingtai Technology will record every step of the experiment, including temperature, reaction effect, etc. Because it is a large cluster, the amount of data accumulated every day is very considerable, which will become the nourishment to improve the capacity of the large model.

At present, this huge "robot jungle" has been able to "wake up" with one click of natural language. In other words, people can make the cluster move as long as they knock out the compound on the computer. However, its evolution iteration is still in progress: the logistics robot that shuttles between different stations now may become a humanoid robot in the future. (Author: Shen Qiusha Picture: provided by Jingtai Technology)