> it would be the only way that makes sense to do research
There will certainly be more than just one way, although I hope cloud labs are the front runner. Also cloud and automated are two separate concepts. We do both, but there's no reason that you can't just do one or the other. The automation is critical for reproducibility for many reasons. But I think the cloud aspect is mostly helpful from a business perspective -- it makes it easier on everyone to get up and running on our system. But there are many in lab automation solutions that are helping fight the reproducibility crisis. And on the flip side, there are cloud labs that aren't automated.
> do you see a way to add the extreme versatility of the biology lab into a cloud service
We let you run any assay that can be executed on the set of the devices that we have in our automated lab. So in that sense, yes its very flexible. Also, there's no need to run your entire workflow in the cloud. You can do some at home, some in the cloud. Some people even string together multiple cloud services into a workflow. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIQ-fi3KoDg&t=1682s
That being said, biology labs can be crazy places. Part of what we do is put constraints on what can be encoded in each protocol to reduce the number of hidden variables. Every parameter that counts must be encoded in the protocol, because once you hit "go" on the protocol, it could run possibly on any number of different devices each time it runs. The only constant is that the exact instructions specified in the protocol will be run on the correct device set.
> do you see a way to add the extreme versatility of the biology lab into a cloud service We let you run any assay that can be executed on the set of the devices that we have in our automated lab. So in that sense, yes its very flexible. Also, there's no need to run your entire workflow in the cloud. You can do some at home, some in the cloud. Some people even string together multiple cloud services into a workflow. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIQ-fi3KoDg&t=1682s
That being said, biology labs can be crazy places. Part of what we do is put constraints on what can be encoded in each protocol to reduce the number of hidden variables. Every parameter that counts must be encoded in the protocol, because once you hit "go" on the protocol, it could run possibly on any number of different devices each time it runs. The only constant is that the exact instructions specified in the protocol will be run on the correct device set.