Room Temperature Hotels

A room temperature hotel (RTH) is the simplest store there is: a fixed rack of plate positions at ambient temperature, with nothing that moves. The robot does all the work. Revolution’s job is to remember what is in which position.

Two are available today:

Device	Positions	Made by
RTH 5 Positions	5, in a single stack	UK Robotics
RTH 10 Positions	10, in a single stack	Hamilton

They are the same thing at two sizes, and they run the same code — Revolution’s shared room-temperature-hotel behaviour, configured with a different position count.

At a glance

Type	Passive ambient plate storage — random access, no mechanism
Stacks	One, on both devices
Positions	5 or 10, depending on the device
Environment	Ambient only — no temperature, gas or humidity control
Revolution control	None from a schedule. Storage is managed by Revolution, movement by the robot

Specifications

No manufacturer specifications are published for these units, and none are stated here. That is not an omission — a passive rack has no throughput, no access time and no power draw to publish, and its dimensions are whatever was built or bought. What matters is taught rather than specified.

The one thing Revolution needs to know about the physical unit is the vertical pitch between positions, which is a device setting. Set it from the rack in front of you.

Supported methods

None. There are no operations, and that is correct rather than a gap.

An RTH is a random-access store, so a schedule does not command it — it asks Revolution’s storage manager for a plate, or hands one back, and Revolution resolves that into a position in the hotel. The physical movement is the robot’s, through the transfer system. Nothing about a shelf can be told to do anything.

This is the same model the Agilent MiniHub and PlateHub follow, minus the rotation — those have a carousel to turn, so they have an operation for turning it. An RTH has nothing to turn.

Integration

There is no cabling, no communications and no vendor software. Setting one up is entirely a matter of geometry:

Prerequisites

• Every position must be taught to the robot that will serve the hotel. Positions are taught individually at configuration time, not derived from a first position and a pitch.
• The vertical pitch must match the rack, and must suit the tallest labware the hotel will hold. A pitch set for standard microplates will not clear deep-well blocks.
• The hotel’s orientation — whether positions run horizontally or vertically — must match how the unit is actually mounted.
• The rack must be within the robot’s reach at every position, including the top and bottom of the stack, which is where reach and wrist clearance usually run out first.

Device configuration

Property	Purpose
Pitch Z	Vertical distance between adjacent positions
Horizontal or Vertical RTH	Whether the hotel’s positions are arranged horizontally or vertically

Both devices also ship with a simulator, so a system using an RTH can be built and a schedule dry-run before the hardware is on the bench.

If you need a hotel of a different size or configuration, get in touch — the position count is the only thing that differs between the two devices above.