> So much advanced equipment is just sitting there in labs, waiting for humans to finally go and make experiments. Which they eventually get round to, sort of, when they can secure funding and when the grad student isn't ill or making mistakes or framing the problem the wrong way.

That's not really what the article is about though. Short of staffing it with humanoid robots, existing labs and their equipment will continue to be unused.

There are groups that are actively working on automating conventional labs like this. Most of the efforts I know about use non-humanoid mobile robots or even just a six-axis arm on a rail and some lab space reconfiguration