{"id":32173,"date":"2023-10-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=32173"},"modified":"2023-10-23T06:41:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T06:41:48","slug":"ai-research-robots-key-to-democratizing-and-revolutionizing-science-world-class-afrl-researcher-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=32173","title":{"rendered":"AI research robots key to \u2018democratizing and revolutionizing science,\u2019 world-class AFRL researcher says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) — \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Internationally acclaimed Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL<\/strong><\/a>, researcher Dr. Benji Maruyama and his team are seeking industry and academic partners to help them transition open-source autonomous experimentation software, known as Educational ARES OS, to public school classrooms across the nation to help foster the next generation of young scientists.<\/p>\n

Educational ARES OS, a self-driving research platform, combines automated robotics with artificially intelligent, or AI, algorithms to run its own experiments, record results and design and execute the next best steps to try to solve problems or find answers to research questions. It utilizes an iteration of the original ARES open-source software system that Maruyama and his team previously rolled out in 2021 to overwhelmingly positive acclaim, currently available to the public as a free Internet download.<\/p>\n

Getting AI research robots into educators\u2019 hands at a low cost is crucial to support AFRL\u2019s ongoing efforts to multiply human research efforts by a thousandfold and to send the message that science is for everyone, said Maruyama, a principal materials research engineer based in AFRL\u2019s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need more people doing research \u2014 there are simply not enough of us,\u201d Maruyama said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t catch students young enough, perhaps by middle school, even, then they\u2019ve effectively already gotten the message that science is not for them, and we really need to change that. And we need the people who are doing science in the U.S. to better represent America\u2019s general population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Autonomous experimentation can effectively lower students\u2019 barriers to entry into scientific fields by exponentially decreasing the cost of doing research, Maruyama said.
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All told, the average schoolteacher with access to Maruyama\u2019s free open-source software on the web and a roughly $300 budget can build their own ARES-enabled autonomous 3D printer for individual classroom use by purchasing hardware that is widely available online. Maruyama and three colleagues recently published an open-access article describing the process of calibrating a low-cost fused deposition modeling 3D printer system using similarly affordable components, Maruyama said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Kristofer Reyes, an assistant professor of applied mathematics at the University of Buffalo, is currently leading efforts to kickstart a self-driving autonomous experimentation lab in its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The lab, projected to open in January 2024, will house one of the first educational programs to utilize Maruyama\u2019s ARES OS software, Reyes said.<\/p>\n

The lab and ARES will feature strongly in an undergraduate course that Reyes will teach this spring for the university\u2019s newly minted Department of Materials Design and Innovation, titled \u201cExperimental Design for Materials Development.\u201d The course blends the teaching of autonomous principles related to computer science, machine learning and materials science applications, Reyes said.<\/p>\n

\u201cARES was sort of the natural choice for the framework for this self-driving lab,\u201d Reyes said. \u201cThis is how research is going to be done in the future, so we\u2019re giving our students early access right out of the gate to become familiar with autonomous materials science and technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among other things, Reyes said, he expects that his students will be able to utilize the new lab and ARES software to conduct metamaterial study, a process by which they can print accurate scale models of various materials and learn how to optimize their structure with respect to their individual properties.<\/p>\n

Educational ARES software makes tackling new projects like this less intimidating, Reyes added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt lowers the barrier for my students and for people like me who don\u2019t have a lot of hardware interfacing experience,\u201d Reyes said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Emily Fehrman Cory, principal consultant at Dayton-based Airship Consulting and former AFRL employee, is another community partner currently initiating efforts to transition Educational ARES to the classroom. Fehrman Cory first crossed paths with Maruyama when she worked as a program manager and co-lead for America Makes in AFRL\u2019s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate in 2015.<\/p>\n

As co-workers, Fehrman Cory and Maruyama connected over their shared interest in carbon nanotube research and commitment to STEM programming. When she kickstarted Airship Consulting two years ago, Fehrman Cory said, she reached out to Maruyama to ask how she could help to spin Educational ARES out into the wider world.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a transition agent, I have been trying to line up opportunities around ARES to further develop this for launch into the STEM education field,\u201d Fehrman Cory said. \u201cPart of this effort includes looking at how we can package [ARES] in a way that is very low cost and easy for schools to adopt. Benji is trying to take [ARES] from the Air Force into the community, and we are trying to bring the community in to meet him.\u201d
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Right now, Fehrman Cory\u2019s effort to help roll out ARES STEM programming into local schools is taking the form of engagement with students and faculty at the University of Dayton, or UD. Fehrman Cory joined forces with Michael Moulton, a Faculty of Practice at UD\u2019s School of Engineering and the Stitt Scholar Program director, to lead a team of multidisciplinary undergraduate students who were accepted into this year\u2019s UD Stitt Scholar Program cohort. The Stitt Scholars, all of whom are students in UD\u2019s School of Engineering, School of Business Administration or College of Arts and Sciences, will complete a paid internship experience spanning one full academic year that is typically tied to a local technology-based or -enabled entrepreneurial effort. This year, three of Moulton\u2019s Stitt Scholars selected Educational ARES as their internship focus.<\/p>\n

The short-term target goal, Moulton said, is for these three students to develop an Educational ARES OS-based software curriculum in support of a STEM summer camp program.<\/p>\n

However, Moulton\u2019s students are also operating with the long game in mind, conducting market research and using cost-benefit analysis to determine where the most reliable, cost-effective 3D printer parts can be purchased. Ultimately, they want to find a way to affordably package a dependable hardware solution alongside ARES software and offer it to teachers as a contained kit to make it easier for them to learn how to implement the technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe students working on this project have already identified some reasonable hardware solutions [to enable autonomous 3D printing] and are now focused primarily on developing curriculum to support moving this into schools,\u201d Moulton said. \u201cIt became pretty evident relatively early in the process that without a well-established curriculum to provide alongside the hardware and software, that integration would be very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

A significant portion of this effort requires students to visit schools within their local communities and engage with educators to determine what they want and need in their classrooms.<\/p>\n

Raegan Rowland, a UD junior and Computer Engineering major, is one of the three Stitt Scholars who chose Educational ARES as her internship focus. Rowland said she hopes her group\u2019s efforts will eventually lead to the development of an ARES-based curriculum that students and schools could use statewide for summer camps or mini courses that will keep students interested in learning about technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work we are doing with ARES is important because it helps kids in the Greater Dayton area experience STEM that they probably wouldn\u2019t be able to outside of a program like this,\u201d Rowland said.
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If educators are expected to nurture students\u2019 interest in STEM education, it is critical to give them \u2014 particularly those serving in underfunded school districts \u2014 the tools they need to teach without overburdening them, Maruyama said, and that includes curriculum.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers are already saddled with massive workloads, and we know there isn\u2019t always time to do something extra like designing and implementing their own autonomous 3D printing curriculum,\u201d Maruyama noted. \u201cIn the case of Educational ARES, we are hoping to deliver not only the robot, but also a full curriculum that\u2019s written out to state standards, to lower the barriers to entry for teachers to implement autonomous experimentation in their own classrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers can spend hours printing failed parts in a lab before finding the optimal settings needed to create a given experimental material, according to AFRL\u2019s original 2021 press release. The pairing of Educational ARES and 3D printing can result in reduced margin of error and fewer wasted materials, as the robot can automatically suggest the best way to print a needed material the first time around.<\/p>\n

Additionally, access to low-cost autonomous 3D-printing capabilities can be pivotal across multiple classroom disciplines, Maruyama said, as the ability to 3D print physical materials in the classroom can help hands-on learners to better absorb information. In a human anatomy class, for example, a student might be asked to 3D print replicas of bones and organs to envision how academic terminology relates to the human body.<\/p>\n

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And while artificially-intelligent robots grow increasingly sophisticated by the day, Maruyama, for his part, said he does not fear them. Instead, he sees AI as the key to \u201cdemocratizing\u201d science, making it more accessible to everyone as humans learn to work in tandem with evolving technology, ultimately freeing themselves from unnecessary toil and leading to greater discovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of autonomous experimentation is not to replace humans, but to augment them,\u201d Maruyama said. \u201cThe next generation of scientists and engineers, these young people, the young graduate students who are doing this work \u2014 we are losing them because we are failing to give them the tools to leverage what they want to do. Imagine that you\u2019re a farmer and somebody points you to a horse and plow and says: \u2018Go till that field.\u2019 You\u2019re going to say: \u2018No, that\u2019s crazy, I want the combine harvester.\u2019 But that\u2019s essentially what our young researchers are going through right now. They go into the lab, they pipette and polish samples, they turn switches on and off. And these are things that can and should be automated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Up-and-coming students and young researchers are voting with their feet, Maruyama said, choosing not to go into research fields after completing their graduate coursework when faced with the tedium of rote experimentation and data collection in their labs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going elsewhere,\u201d Maruyama noted. \u201cThey\u2019re choosing to go work in finance or consulting or software development instead, and not because they don\u2019t like science \u2014 they just don\u2019t enjoy the tedious aspects of science. We\u2019re making them do work that\u2019s better done by robots.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the spring of 2023, Maruyama was named a Materials Research Society, or MRS, fellow, not only for his extensive efforts to create and promote free, open-source AI software, but also to develop carbon nanotubes \u2014 research that bears promising implications for reducing the effects of climate change \u2014 and extensive diversity, equity and inclusion work. The MRS, currently 13,000 strong, has named less than 2% of its current members as fellows.<\/p>\n

Dr. Sergei Kalinin, professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, nominated Maruyama, a longtime friend and colleague, as an MRS fellow. While Maruyama is currently one of many scientists internationally who network tirelessly to promote AI efforts, he was one of the very first to pioneer his vision for a future in which humans would work alongside AI, Kalinin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt varying inflection points throughout history, you can point to these individual scientists who have laid the foundation, sort of ignited these moments of transition,\u201d Kalinin said. \u201cBenji is one of very few people who had this very specific vision [about the future of artificial intelligence and autonomous experimentation] and was in the position to implement this vision, and that vision has provided the foundation for future efforts. Benji was the person who showed us, made the scientific community believe, that the use of machine learning and automated experimentation could come together and make an impact, even in the materials world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ideas by themselves are simply not enough, Kalinin said, to drive technological efforts of this magnitude.<\/p>\n

“What you need to have, in addition to great ideas, are persistence, perseverance and the right environment in which to make those ideas work, to make them ring. In Benji\u2019s case, he clearly was the person in the right place at the right time with the right ideas, and that has made all the difference.” Dr. Sergei Kalinin, University of Tennessee-Knoxville professor of Materials Science and Engineering<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maruyama is also exploring how to utilize artificial intelligence to reduce the effects of climate change; his research efforts connected to carbon nanotube development have established him as one of the world\u2019s leading climate-conscious researchers. According to a September 2021 article published for Forbes, Maruyama and his team conceptualized ARES OS originally as a way to speed up carbon nanotube research, as the slow pace of discovery through lab experiments hindered his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarbon nanotubes are these wonderful materials that are super stiff, super strong, lightweight, electrically and thermally conductive,\u201d Maruyama explained. \u201cThey have all these great properties that we can harness to make all kinds of things that we need, more sustainably \u2014 but, we don\u2019t have the science yet to make them at scale, meaning at millions of tons per year. If we can do it at scale, we might just be able to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by, say, 20% to 40%, which allows us to meet 2050 goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unique properties of carbon nanotubes, which have a drastically reduced carbon footprint in comparison to other materials, make them an excellent potential swap for their less sustainable counterparts, including plastic, steel and concrete.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we know that carbon dioxide pollutes the atmosphere and a lot of that comes from fossil fuels, especially natural gas,\u201d Maruyama said. \u201cNatural gas is mainly just carbon and hydrogen, and more energy is found in the hydrogen. Using a chemical reaction called pyrolysis, essentially heating up the natural gas and methane, we can separate the hydrogen and use that as a clean energy source. We can use it to generate electric power, we can use it for fuel-cell powered vehicles. It can power all kinds of things cleanly and efficiently. The carbon from the methane is sequestered as carbon nanotubes instead of being released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, materials such as plastic, steel and concrete are currently much cheaper to make at scale, and research has a long way to go in determining how to make carbon nanotube production affordable.<\/p>\n

That is where artificial intelligence and autonomous research software come into play, Maruyama said, as artificially-intelligent tools can lessen scientists\u2019 burden and toil and come up with answers to tough research questions much faster than humans can by themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith our original ARES system robot, we went from being able to do one experiment a day to one experiment in five minutes, roughly 100 experiments a day,\u201d Maruyama said. \u201cAdditionally, the AI algorithm in ARES is doing all of that cognitive labor of determining the next best steps, taking that burden off of the researcher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Benjamin Leever, principal general engineer and Maruyama\u2019s branch chief in AFRL\u2019s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, said that it is a credit to AFRL to employ a researcher of Maruyama\u2019s caliber.<\/p>\n

\u201cBenji is an exceptional researcher who is incredibly passionate about what he does,\u201d Leever said. \u201cFor AFRL to have access to a scientist with the kind of publication and presentation record he has, with that kind of reputation amongst members of the scientific community \u2014 it\u2019s just phenomenal. We are very, very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maruyama\u2019s personal commitment to recruiting future researchers is particularly notable, Leever said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s truly the hallmark of a talented researcher, to be someone who not only makes these incredibly significant contributions to science, but who can also see the bigger picture and understand how those contributions are going to impact other fields,\u201d Leever said. \u201cBenji is out there talking to other research pioneers to drive a national strategy for autonomous research. He\u2019s an ambassador for this field and getting lots of people, young and old, excited about science and inspiring people to consider that career path. And that\u2019s unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, Maruyama says, it is safe to assume that there will always be a human in the loop when it comes to working alongside machines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe computer doesn\u2019t know what\u2019s right, what\u2019s good,\u201d Maruyama said. \u201cThat\u2019s the human\u2019s job, to provide that creativity, that insight, that oversight. You know, a lot of people right now are concerned about things like ChatGPT, or artificially-enhanced photographs. But when you look closely, what you see is that this kind of technology simply doesn\u2019t replace people. It does a reasonable job, maybe, of accomplishing specific tasks, but it\u2019s always kind of flat. The writing is flat \u2014 the art is flat \u2014 and in science, it can\u2019t really reason. If you\u2019re looking to find something in the data set, then AI is really, really good at finding it. But the creativity just isn\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ideally, Maruyama said, he\u2019d like to see a world in which humans can embrace a partnership with AI instead of working against it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, especially in the beginning, I got a lot of, \u2018Hey, Benji, what are you doing?\u2019\u201d Maruyama said. \u201cPeople got, and still get, really upset and anxious about AI. But the point of autonomy is not to replace the human. It\u2019s about giving humans the tools and the ability to team up with technology; it\u2019s about working in concert. Ultimately, you\u2019re the one who knows what\u2019s truly right, because you\u2019re the human.\u201d<\/p>\n

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U.S. Air Force Logo<\/title><\/p><\/div>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) — \u00a0 Internationally acclaimed Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, researcher Dr. Benji Maruyama and his team are seeking industry and academic partners to help them transition open-source autonomous experimentation software, known as Educational ARES OS, to public school classrooms across the nation to help foster the next generation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32176,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32173\/revisions\/32176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}