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The purpose of this paper is to describe how the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation (IFF) has developed the automatic façade‐cleaning robot SIRIUSc for use on the Fraunhofer‐Gesellschaft's headquarters, a high‐rise building in Munich, Germany.

The building has a height of 80 m, its façade an area of 4,000 m². Apart from the robot that moves along and cleans the façade, the complete, fully automated system consists of a fully automated gantry that secures, supplies energy to and, above all, positions the robot. Part of the project involved completely automating a standard gantry, which is an integral part of the complete façade‐cleaning robot system.

This paper presents an overview of the significant basic functions of the robot and the gantry, emphasizing the kinematics, the control and sensor systems for navigation and the cleaning sequence that employs the extensive fully automatic functions of the robot and gantry.

The paper presents the first freely climbing façade‐cleaning robot for vertical façades without rails effectively in use in Europe.

Introduction of an automated laboratory system for a new field of laboratory operation, namely cultivation and handling of live brain tissue.

The company's expertise in manual throughput was transferred to automatable methods. Processing data is used for scheduling purposes to yield efficient production of results.

Automated process has comparable survival rates and high reproducibility. Time tolerance is lower than for manual operation.

Several bottle necks of the system have been identified and are to be improved upon in future research. These are especially “handling of membrane inserts” and slow‐running procedures.

Cataloging of activity data (timestamps, parameters, etc.) allows for much easier statistical analysis and data‐mining than with manual operation data.

Tissue‐based, high‐throughput screening is a seminal field in laboratory automation.