The Lab That Runs Itself: SLAC's SPIRE Project
The Lab That Runs Itself: SLAC's SPIRE Project Imagine a laboratory where the experiments run themselves. On 8 October 2026, the US Department of Energy announced SPIRE — the "Source-to-Discovery Platform for Instrumentation, Robotics and Embodied AI" — a project led by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory together with Stanford and other labs and industry partners. Its goal: self-driving laboratories where AI agents and robots run experiments from start to finish. SPIRE will work at two of SLAC's flagship facilities: the LCLS, the world's most powerful X-ray laser, and the SSRL synchrotron. These machines are extraordinary, but they have created a new problem — the X-ray laser now produces data faster than scientists can process it. Brilliant experiments are no longer limited by the hardware; they are limited by human speed. The project attacks the problem on three fronts. First, robots that delicately handle experimental samples. Second, X-ray and electron be...