Ok, the robot is kind of cool, but after reading the wild claims of the article, I have some things swirling in my brain.. So now my conundrum is when they compare the robot to grad students is whether if it works as well as a grad studen are they're saying grad students don't work much or whether they say it won't put people out of a job are they still comparing and saying grad students don't put people out of a job also? When they say the robot's results were just as good as the grad students results, they never said either's results were correct. :-)

One researcher says, " If you opened it up I think humans would have the advantage. We tend to be more flexible "

Ok, so more comparisons about robots and humans, could this mean that if you opened up a human you'd find we are more flexible? :-)

The robot is all fine and dandy but... It is expensive. Thus "free" or "subsistance" wage grad students are still cheaper than a expensive robot.

Granted it may be a boon for boring, repetitive, drudgery tasks, but it can't compete costwise.

So it's likely to wind up in commercial labs where technicians and researchers cost more.

I think the point is that the robots do it FASTER... since the project is creating data that needs to be analyzed at a startling rate that the number of humans involved can't keep up. The robot lab researcher will help the human's keep pace.