ProtoAct: Turning Wet-Lab Protocols into Embodied Robotic Actions

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.01690v1
• Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:39:01 GMT
• Title: ProtoAct: Turning Wet-Lab Protocols into Embodied Robotic Actions
• Abstract summary: We present ProtoAct, a structured protocol-grounding framework that converts free-form biological procedures into state-aware, embodiment-ready action sequences.<n>ProtoAct uses ProtoRAG to retrieve manually annotated examples for context-sensitive parsing, RefineChecker to detect and revise missing or inconsistent steps, and applies Act to map the refined procedure into constrained function sequences.
• Score: 21.45755897337409
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Biological wet-lab protocols are written for trained researchers and often leave routine operations, state-dependent conditions, and contextual parameters implicit, making them difficult to translate into robot-executable actions. We present ProtoAct, a structured protocol-grounding framework that converts free-form biological procedures into state-aware, embodiment-ready action sequences. ProtoAct uses ProtoRAG to retrieve manually annotated examples for context-sensitive parsing, employs RefineChecker to detect and revise missing or inconsistent steps, and applies ActSchema to map the refined procedure into constrained JSON function sequences. We further introduce BioP2E, for which we manually annotate 22 cell-culture protocols into 258 monitoring conditions, 910 executable subtasks, and 962 grounded action calls. Evaluation across seven large language models demonstrates that ProtoAct can be effectively instantiated with different backbones. Ablations confirm that retrieval, posterior checking, and schema constraints make complementary contributions. The parsed subtasks further support demonstration collection and VLA model training, enabling successful execution in both simulation and real-robot settings. ProtoAct thus provides a practical interface between biological protocol understanding and embodied robotic execution.

Related papers

• Constraint-Driven Synthesis of Hyper Petri Nets [46.9047309711542]
  This paper addresses the modeling and synthesis of constrained robotic system behaviors using Petri nets (PNs)<n>It investigates how to construct models in which all observable system states satisfy given logical constraints while remaining consistent with executable transition semantics.<n>The proposed method introduces an explicit execution semantics over observable states, induced by admissible (atomic) firing sequences.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-07-24T07:57:19Z)
• PhyAgentOS: A Self-Evolving Operating System for Embodied Agents with Decoupled Cognitive Planning and Physical Execution [49.776611937968]
  We present PhyAgentOS, a foundation delivering scheduling, verification, memory, benchmarking, and safety as system-level services.<n>Its Session-Centered treats a session, not an action, as the minimum unit of scheduling, compatibility, supervised execution, evidence collection, and acceptance.<n>SessionVerifier distinguishes execution termination from semantic task completion via evidence-grounded verdicts of success, failure, or replan.<n> Benchmarking reuses the deployment session and verification path, so results trace to real execution.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-07-18T04:46:53Z)
• A Self-Evolving Agentic System for Automated Generation and Execution of Biological Protocols [26.510927882022884]
  ProtoPilot is a self-evolving multi-agent system for wet-lab automation.<n>It incorporates layer-wise verifiability, multi-agent orchestration and a runtime skill-updated library to generate protocols.<n>It achieved a Top@3 expert-preference rate of 90.2%, an overall protocol-tocode gate pass rate of 89.5% and an Opentrons pass rate of 88.24%.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-06-30T14:51:13Z)
• Dual-Agent Framework for Cross-Model Verified Translation of Natural-Language Protocols into Robotic Laboratory Platform [1.0499611180329804]
  This study proposes an agent-based protocol translation framework that converts natural-language protocols into executable control commands.<n>The proposed framework provides a flexible approach to narrowing the semantic gap between natural-language protocols and microplate-based self-driving laboratories.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-06-18T11:43:27Z)
• A Technical Taxonomy of LLM Agent Communication Protocols [60.76747983053368]
  This study develops a technical taxonomy to classify and analyze large language models (LLMs) agent communication protocols.<n>The framework guides protocol selection and highlights open research gaps such as privacy and policy enforcement.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-06-17T14:45:20Z)
• LabVLA: Grounding Vision-Language-Action Models in Scientific Laboratories [95.20367571157679]
  Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models provide one possible interface between written protocols and robot execution.<n>Existing policies are trained mostly on household and tabletop demonstrations and rarely encounter the instruments, transparent liquids, or fixed protocol found in scientific laboratories.<n>We present LabVLA, trained with a two-stage recipe: FAST action token pretraining first makes the Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct backbone action aware before any continuous control is learned, and flow matching posttraining then attaches a DiT action expert under knowledge insulation.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-06-11T17:03:53Z)
• BioProVLA-Agent: An Affordable, Protocol-Driven, Vision-Enhanced VLA-Enabled Embodied Multi-Agent System with Closed-Loop-Capable Reasoning for Biological Laboratory Manipulation [15.461936066333633]
  BioProVLA-Agent is a protocol-driven, vision-enhanced embodied multi-agent system for biological manipulation.<n>It integrates protocol parsing, visual state verification, and embodied execution in a closed-loop workflow.<n>We evaluate the system on a hierarchical benchmark covering 15 atomic tasks, 6 composite tasks, and 3 bimanual tasks.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-05-08T06:15:40Z)
• PRISM: Protocol Refinement through Intelligent Simulation Modeling [4.839327116611717]
  We introduce PRISM, a framework that automates the design, validation, and execution of experimental protocols.<n>PRISM uses a set of language-model-based agents that work together to generate and refine experimental steps.<n>We demonstrate PRISM as a practical end-to-end workflow that bridges language-based protocol generation, simulation-based validation, and automated robotic execution.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-01-08T20:15:28Z)
• Behavior Trees vs Executable Ontologies: a Comparative Analysis of Robot Control Paradigms [51.56484100374058]
  We compare two approaches to modeling robotic behavior: imperative Behavior Trees (BTs) and declarative Executable Ontologies (EO)<n>BTs structure behavior hierarchically using control-flow, whereas EO represents the domain as a temporal, event-based semantic graph driven by dataflow rules.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-11-19T09:38:01Z)
• LLM-Assisted Model-Based Fuzzing of Protocol Implementations [9.512044399020514]
  Faults in protocol behavior can lead to vulnerabilities and system failures.<n>A common approach to protocol testing involves constructing Markovian models that capture the state transitions and expected behaviors of the protocol.<n>We propose a novel method that leverages large language models (LLMs) to automatically generate sequences for testing network protocol implementations.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-08-03T13:16:18Z)
• Games for AI Control: Models of Safety Evaluations of AI Deployment Protocols [52.40622903199512]
  This paper introduces AI-Control Games, a formal decision-making model of the red-teaming exercise as a multi-objective, partially observable game. We apply our formalism to model, evaluate and synthesise protocols for deploying untrusted language models as programming assistants.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-09-12T12:30:07Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.