On 30th September 2025, we brought together a fantastic group of scientists and engineers for our first hands-on workshop dedicated to the Open Chemistry Robotics and Automation (OCHRA) framework. It was a day of deep dives, live demos, and, most importantly, community building.
What is OChRA?
For those new to it, OCHRA is a comprehensive, Python-based toolset designed to accelerate materials discovery. In the world of automated science and Self-Driving Labs (SDLs), orchestrating all the different instruments and robots is a major challenge. OCHRA provides a flexible and robust software layer that moves beyond simple, brittle scripts to enable truly autonomous and rapid discovery. Our goal is to empower physical scientists and engineers with a tool that is powerful yet doesn’t have a steep learning curve.
The main purpose of the workshop was to introduce the framework to a wider audience, get crucial feedback from potential users, and kickstart a collaborative community. We believe that OCHRA can become an essential open-source tool for labs everywhere, and that can only happen by working together.
A Packed Day of Learning and Collaboration
The day was split into several sessions to give attendees a complete picture of the framework.
Morning Talk & Live Demo: We kicked off with a presentation covering the motivation behind OCHRA. We looked at the challenges in software for SDLs and surveyed the existing landscape of both commercial and academic frameworks. This was followed by a detailed look at OCHRA’s architecture. The highlight of the morning was a live demo of the framework in action, running a full synthesis bot workflow. This involved a KUKA KMR-iiwa mobile robot, a Chemspeed I-Synth platform, and a Waters HPLC working together seamlessly, all orchestrated by OCHRA. We even walked through the key parts of the code that made it all happen.
Afternoon Hands-On Session: After lunch, it was time for the attendees to get their hands dirty! We provided a series of interactive tutorials in Jupyter notebooks. These exercises were designed to guide them through the basics of using the framework to define and run experiments.
Bringing Code to Life: The most exciting part of the afternoon was when we collectively solved the exercises and ran the code on actual hardware in the lab. This wasn’t just a simulation; attendees saw their own scripts controlling real instruments, reinforcing the practical power of the framework.
Future-Forward Discussion: We wrapped up the day with an open discussion. The feedback was incredibly insightful, and the enthusiasm for building a community around OCHRA was clear. We discussed user impressions, potential new features, and practical ways we can all collaborate to develop new instrument integrations and continue building this powerful tool together.
It was a fantastic and productive day. A big thank you to everyone who attended and contributed. The journey for OCHRA is just beginning, and we’re excited to build a vibrant, open-source community to push the boundaries of autonomous discovery. Stay tuned for more updates!
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