At HighRes®, we recently made a public commitment, not just to our customers, but to ourselves. In the spirit of that open letter, we promised to show up differently: to move faster, to be more transparent, and to let the quality of our innovation speak louder than any claim we could make about it. Published quarterly, this innovation update is our account to you of what we have been building, across our entire digital portfolio, and a deliberate record of the pace at which we are delivering it.
This first edition covers some of the latest developments through the first quarter of 2026 and spans Cellario OS™ V1.14 and V1.15, new Cellario Scheduler™ capabilities, and a look ahead at the AI-powered tools we are bringing to early access.
There will always be more to share than a single update can hold, but we are committed to the cadence. Every quarter, you will hear from us as we showcase the innovations we are bringing. This first one is a big one as there is a lot coming to release and pre-release that we both showcased at SLAS in Boston and are deploying to our expanding user base for Cellario®.
Showcased at SLAS2026 in Boston this February for the first time, HighRes is building a suite of AI-powered tools designed to fundamentally change how scientists interact with laboratory automation. We are introducing these capabilities through an Early Access Beta Program, giving select customers hands-on access ahead of general release and a chance to shape what these tools become before general availability.
If you would like to express interest in joining the Early Access Beta Program, then please get in touch.
Cellario Lab Assistant is the conversational AI layer for the Cellario platform. Rather than navigating menus or manually configuring workflows, scientists can now express their intent in plain language, and Lab Assistant translates that into a structured, executable laboratory workflow. Tell it what you want to run, and it designs the protocol (for Cellario Scheduler) or workflow (for Cellario OS), configures the steps, selects the appropriate instruments, and prepares the order. It bridges the gap between scientific thinking and operational execution.
The broader vision is that anything a user can do within Cellario software can be accomplished through natural language. From designing workflows and scheduling systems, to querying data, assessing lab capabilities, or understanding utilization, Lab Assistant reduces the need for deep familiarity with the user interface and lowers the barrier to interacting with complex automation environments.
You can watch the demonstration of Lab Assistant in conjunction with direct device control (outlined below) and guided tasks for operators through Cellario OS here.
Lab Assistant is powered by Cellario Atlas™, HighRes’ accumulated body of instrument, automation, and scientific intelligence built over decades of designing, deploying, and operating complex laboratory systems. That knowledge base is what allows it to make contextually appropriate choices rather than generic suggestions.
Current use cases in early access include workflow and protocol creation, instrument and system scheduling, execution and run control, and data and insight requests.
Video 1. Cellario Lab Assistant building an orchestration workflow including agent–to-agent Opentrons method building.
Cellario Lab Designer gives teams a 3D workspace to plan and validate laboratory layouts before a single piece of equipment is installed. Instruments, automation platforms, and workflows can be arranged in a fully interactive environment that connects physical layout with operational logic so teams can identify conflicts, validate throughput, and align on design decisions months before deployment.
The result is faster decisions, fewer surprises, and automation investments that can be clearly defended. Lab Designer supports use cases across the full lab lifecycle: greenfield design, lab expansion and reconfiguration, workflow-driven layout optimization, simulation and throughput validation, cross-functional planning and alignment, and implementation readiness. Both our internal teams and early access customers are already using it to compress months of pre-deployment planning into days.
Figure 1. Cellario Lab Designer showing a single system.
One of the longstanding challenges in lab automation is fragility. Even well-engineered systems can be sensitive to small changes in environment, labware placement, or user interaction, leading to errors, interruptions, and ultimately a lack of trust in automation. This fragility has been a key barrier to broader adoption, particularly outside of highly controlled, expert-managed environments.
HighRes Perception is designed to address that challenge directly by increasing the reliability of automation systems through real-time awareness and adaptive response. Rather than requiring perfectly controlled conditions, systems equipped with Perception can see, interpret, and respond dynamically to their environment.
Before a run begins, Perception can validate that everything is in place: confirming liquid handler deck configuration, counting labware in a stacker, or checking consumable orientation. The simple checks that, when missed, can derail an entire protocol. During execution, it proactively prevents errors by verifying conditions in real time, such as confirming a nest is clear before placing a plate. And when unexpected conditions occur, the system can respond automatically, rerouting labware, isolating issues, and allowing the workflow to continue.
The result is not just incremental improvement, but a meaningful shift in how automation is experienced: from systems that require supervision to systems that can be trusted to operate independently. This increase in reliability is foundational to expanding accessibility and ultimately enables more advanced capabilities such as closed-loop experimentation.
Figure 2. Rendering of the FlexPod® with advanced Perception system, featuring the HighRes FlexPod and ACell™ Robotic Arm with Vision, including integrated instruments like the Liconic STX 44-SA Incubator, HighRes PreciseDrop II (PDII)™ Dispenser, and the Agilent Biotek Synergy Reader.
The underlying models - classification, anomaly detection, object detection, quantification - can be combined or trained from scratch to fit a lab’s specific needs. Out-of-the-box capabilities are a starting point, not a ceiling. On the hardware side, Perception is camera, sensor, and robot platform agnostic: it works with small form-factor cameras embedded in stackers, cameras built into robotic arms, and larger pan-tilt-zoom cameras mounted around a system, all three appeared in the same SLAS2026 demonstration workflow, each serving a different detection purpose. For labs with existing camera infrastructure, HighRes can evaluate compatibility, potentially allowing adoption without starting fresh on hardware.
Watch the demonstration of Perception here.
Cellario Scheduler introduces groundbreaking RESTful API endpoints that enable programmatic creation, modification, and optimization of laboratory protocols through automated agents and intelligent systems. These type-safe APIs support the full spectrum of protocol design, from creating complex multi-threaded workflows with polymorphic step types to dynamically adjusting parameters, resources, and timing constraints based on real-time experimental feedback. Laboratory teams can now deploy AI agents that automatically refine protocols during Design-Make-Test-Analyze (DMTA) cycles, learning from each iteration to optimize throughput, reduce reagent consumption, and improve experimental outcomes.
This automation capability transforms how laboratories approach protocol development, moving from static, manually designed workflows to dynamic, self-optimizing processes that continuously evolve based on performance data. Research teams can implement intelligent agents that monitor experimental results, identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies, and automatically generate protocol variants for A/B testing, all while maintaining full audit trails and validation controls. The result is accelerated research cycles enabling breakthrough discoveries through systematic, automated optimization of laboratory processes.
The past two releases of Cellario OS - V1.14 and V1.15 - represent a significant step forward in whole-lab automation software. These updates span new device control architecture, deeper third-party integrations, a redesigned lab visibility interface, and expanded control capabilities that put more power directly in the hands of scientists and lab operators.
Before Cellario OS V1.14, controlling and communicating with laboratory devices was possible but constrained by routing everything through Cellario Scheduler. With the introduction of Direct Device Control, Cellario OS can now communicate with devices directly, providing a cleaner, more responsive path to device management without requiring an active scheduling context.
This capability is enabled by two new components: a Network Gateway, which acts as a secure API gateway for routing traffic between Cellario OS components; and Cellario Edge, a software application that hosts device drivers and enables direct communication with laboratory automation systems.
Once connected, operators and developers can use the Cellario OS APIs to perform a wide range of device management tasks: retrieving the operations each device supports, starting operations, checking the status of operations and events, clearing device errors, downloading output files, and resetting device drivers.
This opens new possibilities for real-time diagnostics, automated troubleshooting, and programmatic device orchestration directly from within Cellario OS and creates the foundational architecture to apply Cellario OS to a much broader set of laboratory workflows where physical automation may not be required.
Video 2. Workflow execution in Cellario OS showing a mix of guided operator tasks and direct device control for a manually driven qPCR experiment.
Sample logistics is a core application area for HighRes, and a critical component of many laboratory workflows, particularly in drug discovery and screening environments where dose response experiments are foundational.
With Cellario OS V1.15, we are advancing toward a gold standard solution for orchestrated sample logistics through expanded dose-response capabilities for users of Mosaic by Cenevo and Scigilian software. These enhancements enable laboratories to manage complex compound preparation workflows, including intermediates, DMSO plates, and dispense plate calculations, directly within Cellario OS as part of a unified orchestration framework.
Declarative dose-response requests are handled through the automatic calculation of intermediate, dispense, and DMSO plate transfers. Source and destination concentration attributes are surfaced in both the Plate Transfers and Well Transfers lists. Controls, copies, and replicates are also now supported, giving teams running dose-response screens the flexibility to configure their experiments precisely within the ordering workflow.
A key usability improvement accompanies this: the Liquid Transfers tab on the Order Details screen now lets you toggle between the original transfer list and the processed transfers including all intermediates. For split orders, this view makes it straightforward to monitor the progress of liquid transfers as they execute. Dilution settings can now also be overridden at either the scientific protocol level or the individual work order level, giving teams fine-grained control without altering global defaults
Figure 3. Liquid Transfer tab in Cellario OS showing the detailed well transfers from a Mosaic request.
Cellario OS continues to expand its ecosystem of third-party integrations. In V1.15, Cellario OS added native support for Limfinity Biobanking LIMS software, extending the platform's ability to connect sample management workflows directly to lab automation execution. This integration follows the same model used for existing partners and allows Cellario OS to act as a single orchestration layer across multiple informatics platforms.
The Benchling integration is a significant step in connecting laboratory execution to the scientific record. By linking Cellario OS directly to Benchling’s ELN platform, teams can bridge the gap between what happens on the automation system and how results are captured, annotated, and made available for downstream analysis. Automated workflows can trigger data writes back to Benchling experiments in real time, reducing manual transcription, improving data fidelity, and closing the loop between physical lab execution and the lab-to-insight pipeline.
This is an area HighRes expects to deepen considerably. More capability in this space is coming later in the year.
Video 3. The Benchling x Cellario OS™ integration showing an ELISA order being created in Benchling and executed through Cellario.
If you want to see the integration live, register for our upcoming webinar with Benchling. You can also read about this integration in depth in our recent blog.
One of the most visible changes in Cellario OS V1.15 is the complete redesign of the System View interface. What was previously a collection of separate tabs - Overview, Locations, Systems, Carts, and Resources - has been unified into a single, comprehensive screen: the Lab Overview.
The Lab Overview gives every user in the organization a single place to see all lab-related assets: systems mobile equipment such as FlexCarts™, docks, and individual devices. Each asset is displayed with its status, physical location, docking state, and the active Cellario Scheduler and driver version. The hierarchical tree view allows you to drill down from the system to the individual instruments operating within it, or from a dock to the cart currently connected to it.
Figure 4. The new System View in Cellario OS showing everything from systems through carts and devices in a single view.
The practical benefits extend beyond visibility. From the Lab Overview, operators can optimize scheduling and resource utilization by seeing equipment usage across the entire organization on one screen. Real-time cart and FlexCart docking states are visible without manual tracking. For assets connected to a system, the Lab Overview provides a direct link to the Metrics screen to monitor active runs and operations.
For teams integrating Cellario OS programmatically, a new API endpoint accompanies this feature, returning a hierarchical representation of the lab from campus down to individual resources, complete with status and aggregate counts, accessible via a single GET request.
For a demo of any of these new capabilities (or the rest of Cellario platform), please get in touch.
If you would like to just know more about the Early Access program to the beta products, then please get in touch.