A Grassroots Network and Community Roadmap for Interconnected Autonomous Science Laboratories for Accelerated Discovery

Scientific discovery is being revolutionized by AI and autonomous systems, yet current autonomous laboratories remain isolated islands unable to collaborate across institutions. We present the Autonomous Interconnected Science Lab Ecosystem (AISLE), a grassroots network transforming fragmented capabilities into a unified system that shortens the path from ideation to innovation to impact and accelerates discovery from decades to months. AISLE addresses five critical dimensions—(1) cross-institutional equipment orchestration, (2) intelligent data management with FAIR compliance, (3) AI-agent driven orchestration grounded in scientific principles, (4) interoperable agent communication interfaces, and (5) AI/ML-integrated scientific education. Robust interoperable communication requires developing layered protocol architectures that separate concerns across physical networking, message formatting, semantic interpretation, and coordination logic levels. Priority should be given to creating vendor-agnostic hardware abstraction layers with standardized APIs that can interface with instruments from multiple manufacturers while providing consistent communication interfaces for autonomous agents.

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