HyveTM Laboratory Process Automation: Cosmetics - Stability and Accelerated Testing
Your Experiment, Your Process, Automated
The purpose of stability testing of cosmetic products is to ensure that a new or modified product meets the intended physical, chemical and microbiological quality standards as well as functionality and aesthetics when stored under appropriate conditions. Testing is required for regulatory purposes and should be performed in order to assure stability and physical integrity of cosmetic products under appropriate conditions of storage, transport and usage, chemical and microbiological stability as well as compatibility of the contents and the container.
HyveTM, a dedicated, new, autonomous, automation system employing a collaborative Techman robot at its heart has been designed to discover advancements in formulation chemistry and subsequent testing in laboratory environments. HyveTM has been purposed for the complete automation of lab processes around stability testing in the cosmetics R&D and production environment. HyveTM is unique in the turnkey, laboratory automation marketplace with its collaborative robot and extreme modularity offers a paradigm shift in flexibility. The HyveTM can be used as a stand-alone system or can operate together in a Beehive-like architecture to form a production line or multiple testing set-up. Its unique, extreme modular concept allows it to be adapted and redeployed easily so as your requirements change and a new process is developed, the HyveTM can change with it!
HyveTM allows AST to offer the first ‘off-the-shelf’ modular, collaborative robotic system for stability testing of cosmetic and consumer products reducing production costs, improving reliability and ultimately increasing speed to market. The HyveTM has been developed specifically to work alongside humans without the need of a cumbersome safety cage and the versatility of the robot means it can be configured easy with hand gestures for programming position. The cobot at the centre of HyveTM complies with all safety requirements for the collaboration of humans and robots as specified in ISO 10218, ISO/TS 15066 and ISO/TR 18811:2018(en). An on-board scheduler allows the operator to design their experiment their way with walk-away capability when needed.
The Hyve platform is especially suited to complex processes and is being applied to many new automation processes in laboratory and cosmetics environments. Some examples of where they can be deployed include; cosmetics in-vitro SPF-factor testing, hair-care testing such as forced degradation studies, photostability, creaming and difficult sample preparation for HPLC and GC-MS analytics.
Hyve is unique in the turnkey, laboratory automation marketplace and sets new standards for many laboratory processes which were previously not automatable due to the unique modularity and functionality of the system and the collaborative human-robot nature of the platform. Indeed, AST specialise in looking at applications for which automation does not typically even exist. Alongside its sister product, the DEFT Digital Enabled Formulation Toolset which integrates laboratory instruments into a bench-level integrated, programmable network, AST are revolutionising the laboratory environment as part of an automation roadmap.
Applied Scientific Technologies (AST) is an emerging spin-out company founded in 2017 based in Stokesley, North Yorkshire. Founded by two directors from Applied Integration UK Ltd, a company celebrating its 15th working anniversary. AST are innovative specialists in robotics, automated control systems and hardware integration in the laboratory, chemical, pharmaceutical, physical and life science arenas supporting your digitalisation and Lab-of-the-Future journey.