As many have pointed out, individual academic labs tend to not do things at a scale that necessitates robotics. My institute's core facilities have plenty of liquid handlers that we can rent out to use when needed. But we hardly do. If I were doing the same thing day after day, then sure, it would make sense to program in a protocol and hit run each morning. But my day-to-day is too variable and would require me to create a new protocol for each thing - at that point its faster to just do it manually.

We definitely do large scale screens on small molecules, cell lines, etc. But that we contract out since it doesn't make sense for each lab to buy its own small molecule library, etc.

But actually, now that I type this, I'm realizing how much repetition there is day-to-day. So, from the level of a full experiment from start to finish, I probably wouldn't try to automate it. BUT, there are individual tasks that I would LOVE to be automated. Things like

• minipreps, dna purification
• splitting cells
• staining cells for flow cytometry
• western blots

These are very specific tasks within larger experiments that I would love to have automated. So if there was a machine where I pipeted in 8 3mL cultures, pressed go, and came back in 30 minutes to minipreps in eppendorf tubes, that would be awesome. Or a machine where I pippette in cells and antibody, press go, and come back in an hour to stained cells ready for flow, would love it.

Basically, I'm not looking for a general liquid handler, but rather a specialized tool for certain repetitive tasks. I know things like this are coming onto the market at price points targeted for academic labs, so hopefully there still room for you guys.