GENIE: a multi-agent system for closed-loop autonomous microscopy

Abstract

Microscopy is foundational to biology, enabling direct observation of otherwise inaccessible cellular structures and processes. Artificial intelligence has advanced microscopy through acquisition control, image analysis, and natural language instrument operation. No system has unified these steps into a complete experimental loop. We introduce an autonomous multi-agent system that turns plain language goals into measurements and statistically tested answers, gating and executing every action in deterministic code. This sets the groundwork for extending microscopy from biological observation to autonomous investigation.