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Seminar✓ Recording AvailableOpen Source

Autopilot v0.4.0 - Distributing development of a distributed experimental framework

Jonny Saunders

University of Oregon

Schedule
Wednesday, September 29, 2021

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Schedule

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

3:00 AM America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires

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Host: Open Source Neuro

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Recording provided by the organiser.

Event Information

Domain

Open Source

Original Event

View source

Host

Open Source Neuro

Duration

70 minutes

Abstract

Autopilot is a Python framework for performing complex behavioral neuroscience experiments by coordinating a swarm of Raspberry Pis. It was designed to not only give researchers a tool that allows them to perform the hardware-intensive experiments necessary for the next generation of naturalistic neuroscientific observation, but also to make it easier for scientists to be good stewards of the human knowledge project. Specifically, we designed Autopilot as a framework that lets its users contribute their technical expertise to a cumulative library of hardware interfaces and experimental designs, and produce data that is clean at the time of acquisition to lower barriers to open scientific practices. As autopilot matures, we have been progressively making these aspirations a reality. Currently we are preparing the release of Autopilot v0.4.0, which will include a new plugin system and wiki that makes use of semantic web technology to make a technical and contextual knowledge repository. By combining human readable text and semantic annotations in a wiki that makes contribution as easy as possible, we intend to make a communal knowledge system that gives a mechanism for sharing the contextual technical knowledge that is always excluded from methods sections, but is nonetheless necessary to perform cutting-edge experiments. By integrating it with Autopilot, we hope to make a first of its kind system that allows researchers to fluidly blend technical knowledge and open source hardware designs with the software necessary to use them. Reciprocally, we also hope that this system will support a kind of deep provenance that makes abstract "custom apparatus" statements in methods sections obsolete, allowing the scientific community to losslessly and effortlessly trace a dataset back to the code and hardware designs needed to replicate it. I will describe the basic architecture of Autopilot, recent work on its community contribution ecosystem, and the vision for the future of its development.

Topics

PythonRaspberry PiRaspberry Pisautopilotbehaviourbehavioural neurosciencedata acquisitionexperimental designshardware interfacesnaturalisticopen scientific practicespython frameworkreproducibilitysemantic websemantic web technology

About the Speaker

Jonny Saunders

University of Oregon

Contact & Resources

Personal Website

open-neuroscience.com/en/post/autopilot/

@auto_pi_lot

Follow on Twitter/X

twitter.com/auto_pi_lot

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