Tool Co-DesignExpert
Tool-Policy Co-Design for Powder Weighing in Laboratory Automation
This preprint presents a co-design method that jointly optimizes a powder-dispensing spoon's geometry and its reinforcement-learning control policy for robotic laboratory weighing. In real-robot trials, the best co-designed tool reduced overall weighing error to 2.23±3.00 mg from 4.09±6.82 mg for a standard tool across seven powders, about a 45% relative reduction. The approach addresses a bottleneck in self-driving labs by adapting tools, not just policies, to material flow behavior.