Control system and method for controlling execution of scientific experiments by laboratory instruments

A method of controlling execution of scientific experiments by laboratory instruments, the method being performed by a control system programmed with a control manager, a metrics manager, and a roll-up engine, the method comprising the steps of:

• instantiating experiment control objects by the control manager in containment relationships linking said objects;
• interfacing said experiment control objects with the laboratory instruments to control an experiment;
• the metrics manager defining experiment metrics independently of the control manager by:
• generating an interface, said interface being an object instantiated by the metrics manager and containing metric objects each defining at least one metric, and instantiating at least one said metric object, and
• associating experiment control objects with said interface such that said experiment control objects inherit attributes from the metric objects;
• dynamically monitoring change events by the roll up engine during execution of the experiment by the instruments;
• automatically transmitting a change notification to experiment control objects by the roll-up engine when a change event occurs, said notification including data indicating the change event in terms of pre-defined metrics;
• and
• said experiment control objects which receive a change notification automatically responding by dynamically modifying their experiment control operations,
• said experiment control objects including a phase object and a gate object, said phase object being linked with the gate object which iteratively monitors experiment data to determine if a current experiment phase should terminate and if a further phase should be initiated.