Tsubame Lab, a startup from Institute of Science Tokyo, launches cloud-based research automation platform
Tsubame Lab Inc. has launched "Tsubame Cloud Lab," an infrastructure allowing researchers to design and automate experiments online, solving inefficiency in manual research tasks.
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- 📰 Published: April 1, 2026 at 08:00
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Tsubame Lab Inc. (Headquarters: Meguro-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Koshiro Narasaki; hereinafter "Tsubame Lab") announces that it has commenced operations of the cloud-based automated experimental platform "Tsubame Cloud Lab."
This platform is a research infrastructure that allows researchers to design, execute, and manage data for experiments online from anywhere. It integrates all lab automation systems introduced by the company into a single cloud platform, fully launching as Japan's first "distributed cloud lab network."
## What is happening at the research site — Most of researchers' time is lost to "tasks"
The daily life of researchers working in university laboratories or corporate R&D departments is vastly different from what many people imagine. The time devoted to the "essence of research" — formulating hypotheses, designing experiments, analyzing the obtained data, and deriving new insights — is actually very small within a day. It is said that the time researchers can spend on creative activities is less than 10% of the total.
So what is the rest of the time used for? Weighing and preparing reagents, making culture media, dispensing liquids with pipettes, operating centrifuges and incubators, washing and sterilizing equipment, handwritten recording in laboratory notebooks, manual data entry — these repetitive tasks occupy the majority of a researcher's day. While each of these tasks is simple, accuracy is required, mistakes are not tolerated, and they consume an enormous amount of time.
This problem is not simply a matter of "researchers being busy." The research process that relies on manual work threatens the credibility of science itself. Reproducibility in research — whether the same results can be obtained using the same procedures — is a principle that forms the foundation of science, but in reality, many researchers have experienced being unable to reproduce others' experiments, and cases where they cannot accurately reproduce even their own past experiments are not uncommon. Most of the causes lie in subtle variations in experimental conditions, incomplete records, and protocols that rely on tacit knowledge. These are all structural problems arising from the research process relying on human manual work and memory.
## What is lab automation — Technology that liberates research from "manual work"
The technological field of "lab automation" was born to solve these challenges.
Lab automation is a general term for technology that automates the preparation, execution, measurement, and recording of experiments by combining robot arms, automated dispensing devices, sensors, control software, etc. By substituting robots for work that was manually done by humans, not only is 24/7 continuous operation possible, but complete reproducibility of experimental conditions is also guaranteed. The amount of reagents, temperature, time, and sequence of operations — everything is digitally controlled and recorded, realizing experiments where "anyone gets the same results."
In Europe and the United States, lab automation has already become an indispensable infrastructure in drug discovery screening by pharmaceutical companies and material exploration by material manufacturers. In recent years, in collaboration with AI, "Self-Driving Labs," where AI analyzes experimental results in real-time and automatically proposes and executes the next experiment to be done, are also being commercialized.
On the other hand, the introduction of lab automation in Japan is still in its infancy. The biggest barriers to this are cost and the high hurdle of introduction. Conventional lab automation systems are predominantly semi-custom-made to match the experimental protocols of each laboratory, with prices ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of yen, and the period until introduction is 1 to 2...
This platform is a research infrastructure that allows researchers to design, execute, and manage data for experiments online from anywhere. It integrates all lab automation systems introduced by the company into a single cloud platform, fully launching as Japan's first "distributed cloud lab network."
## What is happening at the research site — Most of researchers' time is lost to "tasks"
The daily life of researchers working in university laboratories or corporate R&D departments is vastly different from what many people imagine. The time devoted to the "essence of research" — formulating hypotheses, designing experiments, analyzing the obtained data, and deriving new insights — is actually very small within a day. It is said that the time researchers can spend on creative activities is less than 10% of the total.
So what is the rest of the time used for? Weighing and preparing reagents, making culture media, dispensing liquids with pipettes, operating centrifuges and incubators, washing and sterilizing equipment, handwritten recording in laboratory notebooks, manual data entry — these repetitive tasks occupy the majority of a researcher's day. While each of these tasks is simple, accuracy is required, mistakes are not tolerated, and they consume an enormous amount of time.
This problem is not simply a matter of "researchers being busy." The research process that relies on manual work threatens the credibility of science itself. Reproducibility in research — whether the same results can be obtained using the same procedures — is a principle that forms the foundation of science, but in reality, many researchers have experienced being unable to reproduce others' experiments, and cases where they cannot accurately reproduce even their own past experiments are not uncommon. Most of the causes lie in subtle variations in experimental conditions, incomplete records, and protocols that rely on tacit knowledge. These are all structural problems arising from the research process relying on human manual work and memory.
## What is lab automation — Technology that liberates research from "manual work"
The technological field of "lab automation" was born to solve these challenges.
Lab automation is a general term for technology that automates the preparation, execution, measurement, and recording of experiments by combining robot arms, automated dispensing devices, sensors, control software, etc. By substituting robots for work that was manually done by humans, not only is 24/7 continuous operation possible, but complete reproducibility of experimental conditions is also guaranteed. The amount of reagents, temperature, time, and sequence of operations — everything is digitally controlled and recorded, realizing experiments where "anyone gets the same results."
In Europe and the United States, lab automation has already become an indispensable infrastructure in drug discovery screening by pharmaceutical companies and material exploration by material manufacturers. In recent years, in collaboration with AI, "Self-Driving Labs," where AI analyzes experimental results in real-time and automatically proposes and executes the next experiment to be done, are also being commercialized.
On the other hand, the introduction of lab automation in Japan is still in its infancy. The biggest barriers to this are cost and the high hurdle of introduction. Conventional lab automation systems are predominantly semi-custom-made to match the experimental protocols of each laboratory, with prices ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of yen, and the period until introduction is 1 to 2...