Message From Phil Farrelly, President

MAXIMIZE THE USEFULNESS OF YOUR LAB INSTRUMENTS

How many times have you wanted to use a robot system that you own but needed to wait until it was finished running another user's method (or one of your own) that still had hours left to run? Hudson has developed a solution for this that now gives robot users a huge  advantage: SoftLinx for Systems™ .

Hudson's SoftLinx for Systems workcell scheduler and data tracking software allows you to start and run additional methods at any time, even if unplanned, and even while another robotic method is running. Now you can get the maximum usage out of your expensive instruments that are otherwise "tied up" waiting for a single method to end. No other robot scheduler software can do this!

This is an important step toward the goal of making robots and automation as flexible and easy to use as the manual methods researchers have been used to. This unique capability gives a Hudson robot system the same flexibility as a manually operated set of instruments, yet with  the steadiness and hands-free control of automation, allowing for walk away freedom and cost effectiveness.

We recognized long ago that the systems our customers asked us to automate usually contained valuable instruments that far exceeded the cost of our own robots and other automation devices. Yet, often the user might wish to use only a small part of the capability of all that instrumentation when running an automated method that he or she needed at the time. Yet, why let all that valuable equipment sit idle if those instruments could be used more productively, solely because the initial user's method is currently running? Why not let other users run their processes without stopping or interrupting the first user's method, and get the most out of their investment in equipment?

This logical goal led us to create SoftLinx for Systems, to allow researchers to maximize the output of their instruments and not let their capacity sit idle waiting for a limited run to end. Users can load their samples into the robot system and start a new method whenever they wish. SoftLinx will schedule out the interleaved methods, resolve any physical conflicts, and maximize the throughput of both (or all three, or four, ...) methods' samples.

SoftLinx for Systems is a remarkable innovation that should be seen by anyone considering automating the operation of valuable lab instruments.