India, Dec. 24 -- Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi researchers, in collaboration with scientists from Denmark and Germany, have created an AI agent named artificially intelligent lab assistant (AILA). The agent can conduct scientific experiments like a human, the institute said on Tuesday.

AILA can autonomously operate an atomic force microscope (AFM), a highly sensitive instrument used in material research, set up parameters to run experiments and analyse results. The agent has helped reduce the time taken to optimise high-resolution AFM imaging from 24 hours to 7-10 minutes, said Indrajeet Mandal, first author of the work and a PhD scholar at the School of Interdisciplinary Research, IIT Delhi.

However, the journey revealed ...