The Experiment Orchestration System (EOS)

Foundation for laboratory automation

EOS is a comprehensive software framework and runtime for laboratory automation, designed to serve as the foundation for one or more automated or self-driving labs (SDLs).

EOS provides:

• A common framework to implement laboratory automation
• A plugin system for defining labs, devices, experiments, tasks, and optimizers
• A package system for sharing and reusing code and resources across the community
• Extensive static and dynamic validation of experiments, task parameters, and more
• A runtime for executing tasks, experiments, and experiment campaigns
• A central authoritative orchestrator that can communicate with and control multiple devices
• Distributed task execution and optimization using the Ray framework
• Built-in Bayesian experiment parameter optimization
• Optimized task scheduling
• Device and sample container allocation system to prevent conflicts
• Result aggregation such as automatic output file storage

Documentation is available at https://unc-robotics.github.io/eos/.

Installation

EOS should be installed on a central laboratory computer that is easily accessible.

EOS requires PostgreSQL and MinIO for data and file storage. These can be run with Docker Compose.

1. Install uv

   • Linux/Mac

     curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

   • Windows

     powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

2. Install EOS

   git clone https://github.com/UNC-Robotics/eos
   cd eos
   uv venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   uv sync

3. Configure EOS

   cp .env.example .env
   cp config.example.yml config.yml

   Edit both .env and config.yml and provide values for missing fields

4. Launch External Services

   docker compose up -d

5. Start EOS

   eos start
   

Citation

If you use EOS for your work, please cite:

@inproceedings{Angelopoulos2025_EOS,
  title = {The {{Experiment Orchestration System}} ({{EOS}}): {{Comprehensive Foundation}} for {{Laboratory Automation}}},
  shorttitle = {The {{Experiment Orchestration System}} ({{EOS}})},
  booktitle = {2025 {{IEEE International Conference}} on {{Robotics}} and {{Automation}} ({{ICRA}})},
  author = {Angelopoulos, Angelos and Baykal, Cem and Kandel, Jade and Verber, Matthew and Cahoon, James F. and Alterovitz, Ron},
  year = {2025},
  month = may,
  pages = {15900--15906},
  doi = {10.1109/ICRA55743.2025.11128578},
}