{"schema_version":1,"research_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_external_evaluation_20260803","source_assessment_id":"representation_independent_interface_contract__chemistry_materials:P3:v0","cell_id":"representation_independent_interface_contract__chemistry_materials","search_queries":["battery cycling protocol reproducibility vendor cycler differences metadata standardization","electrochemical battery cycler API common interface open source driver protocol","Battery Data Genome cycler protocol interoperability official","PyBaMM Experiment battery cycling protocol documentation","\"Battery Cycler Language\" protocol standardization","site:github.com battery cycler language BCL vendor agnostic protocol","HELAO electrochemistry orchestration potentiostat driver API state machine","battery cycler standard protocol software vendor agnostic API","site:osti.gov battery data genome principles metadata interoperability cycling protocols","\"Demonstrating Linked Battery Data\" DOI Battery Cycler Language","site:github.com/Battery-Data-Alliance Battery Cycler Language BCL","official battery testing safety manual cycler test limits DOE INL","battery cycler current sign convention vendor Arbin BioLogic Neware difference scholarly","battery cycling reproducibility test protocol metadata reporting study","battery cycler equipment differences measurement accuracy experimental reproducibility paper","open source battery cycler software universal driver API Arbin Maccor BioLogic","site:biologic.net SDK API potentiostat EC-Lab development package official","site:biologic.net \"EC-Lab Development Package\"","site:maccor.com API battery cycler software automation official","site:arbin.com API battery testing software MITS official","\"Orchestrating nimble experiments across interconnected labs\" PMC","\"Orchestrating nimble experiments across interconnected labs\" DOI","\"Battery Test Manual For Electric Vehicles, Revision 3\" pdf INL","\"Principles of the Battery Data Genome\" full text"],"sources":[{"source_id":"S1","title":"Principles of the Battery Data Genome","publisher":"arXiv; subsequently published in Joule","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.07278","source_class":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","publication_date":"2021-09-14","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Battery research suffers from fragmented, non-uniform data and software practices.","Repeated, time-consuming cell testing and lost research productivity make standardization consequential.","The Battery Data Genome identifies a broad battery-community constituency and a funded standardization agenda."]},{"source_id":"S2","title":"Demonstrating Linked Battery Data To Accelerate Knowledge Flow in Battery Science","publisher":"arXiv","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23303","source_class":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","publication_date":"2024-10-16","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Battery Cycler Language already provides manufacturer-independent, machine-readable cycling-procedure descriptions.","Cycler brands use differing nomenclature, symbols, units, and formats.","The published next step is interoperability that permits procedures to be applied across cycler brands."]},{"source_id":"S3","title":"Battery protocol simulator: verify cycler programs before they run","publisher":"Ionworks","url":"https://ionworks.com/solutions/battery-protocol-simulator","source_class":"COMMERCIAL_FIRST_PARTY","publication_date":"undated","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["A currently offered product parses Arbin, Maccor, Neware, BioLogic, and Novonix schedules into a validated Universal Cycler Protocol.","The product models control flow, direction, end conditions, variables, setpoints, and step advancement before physical testing.","The publisher expressly identifies vendor-specific control-flow conventions, absence of linting or dry runs, wasted channel time, engineering effort, and delays as a customer problem."]},{"source_id":"S4","title":"Battery Data Format (.bdf)","publisher":"Battery Data Alliance, a Linux Foundation Energy project","url":"https://github.com/battery-data-alliance/battery-data-format","source_class":"OFFICIAL_ORGANIZATION_DATA","publication_date":"undated","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["An identifiable industry organization is actively standardizing cycler time-series data for consistency and model compatibility.","The format fixes units and current sign and distinguishes portable counters from instrument-defined step identifiers.","Pause-time behavior remains instrument-defined, demonstrating a boundary between data-format harmonization and execution semantics."]},{"source_id":"S5","title":"Orchestrating nimble experiments across interconnected labs","publisher":"California Institute of Technology; published by the Royal Society of Chemistry","url":"https://authors.library.caltech.edu/records/ck7sp-6m478","source_class":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","publication_date":"2023-12-01","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["HELAO-async already abstracts laboratory resource managers and orchestrators behind FastAPI servers.","Asynchronous start, stop, polling, messaging, and independent runtimes are established laboratory-automation implementation patterns.","DOE, Toyota Research Institute, and the U.S. Air Force funded closely adjacent laboratory-automation work."]},{"source_id":"S6","title":"Tutorial 5 - Run experiments","publisher":"PyBaMM Project","url":"https://docs.pybamm.org/en/v26.4.0/source/examples/notebooks/getting_started/tutorial-5-run-experiments.html","source_class":"OFFICIAL_PRODUCT_DOCUMENTATION","publication_date":"2026-04","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["PyBaMM already represents cycling experiments as declarative charge, discharge, rest, hold, duration, and termination-condition steps.","The same experiment object can drive simulated cycling behavior and expose cycle-level results.","Simulation semantics include nontrivial behavior such as permitting steps, but not cycles, to be skipped."]},{"source_id":"S7","title":"Battery Test Manual For Electric Vehicles, Revision 3","publisher":"Idaho National Laboratory and U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy","url":"https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1186745","source_class":"GOVERNMENT_OR_REGULATOR","publication_date":"2015-06-01","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["DOE and USABC use governed test procedures for battery performance and life characterization.","Test methods and limits require domain authority and are not safely replaced by software-adapter conformance.","The manual provides an authoritative precedent for separating procedure governance from implementation tooling."]},{"source_id":"S8","title":"EC-Lab Integration Solutions","publisher":"BioLogic","url":"https://www.biologic.net/softwares/ec-lab-oem-development-package/","source_class":"OFFICIAL_PRODUCT_DOCUMENTATION","publication_date":"undated","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["A major potentiostat vendor offers SDK and OEM packages for programmatic instrument integration.","The supported interface can create experiments, add techniques, set parameters, and load them to devices.","Hardware, operating-system, language, and technique support vary, so capability declarations and vendor licensing remain necessary."]}],"problem_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"The sources strongly establish fragmented battery software/data practices, vendor-specific protocol formats and control-flow conventions, inconsistent units and identifiers, and real costs from undetected schedule errors. They do not directly measure how often deployed controllers inspect private driver state or demonstrate that a representation-only adapter swap changes cutoff precedence, pause behavior, or communication-loss outcomes. The general problem visibly exists and matters, but the proposal's precise runtime-divergence prevalence remains unmeasured.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S4"]},"stakeholder_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"Ionworks has commercialized vendor-neutral protocol parsing and simulation; the Battery Data Alliance is stewarding cycler-data standards; Battery Cycler Language researchers explicitly seek cross-brand execution; and DOE, industry, and government fund adjacent laboratory automation. These are identifiable implementers, standardizers, and funders with expressed need. No source records a laboratory or cycler vendor requesting the exact lifecycle-and-fault conformance contract proposed here or committing to adopt it.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S4","S5"]},"prior_art":{"proximity":"SUBSTANTIAL_COLLISION","closest_analogues":[{"name":"Ionworks Universal Cycler Protocol and protocol simulator","similarity":"Very close: converts multiple proprietary cycler schedules into a vendor-neutral validated protocol, resolves control flow, applies setpoints, evaluates end conditions, advances steps, and simulates traces before hardware use.","remaining_difference":"The public description does not establish one opaque runtime CyclingSession lifecycle across independently implemented adapters, typed communication-loss semantics, idempotent abort, no-actuation transition tests, or mutation-tested adapter conformance.","source_ids":["S3"]},{"name":"Battery Cycler Language","similarity":"Close: defines manufacturer-independent cycling-procedure descriptions with common terminology, units, limits, and sequences and expressly targets cross-brand interoperability.","remaining_difference":"It standardizes procedure representation rather than a complete runtime state machine, authorization gates, observations, fault recovery, terminal postconditions, and reusable adapter oracle.","source_ids":["S2"]},{"name":"HELAO-async resource-manager APIs","similarity":"Adjacent: hides laboratory resources behind asynchronous service APIs and supports independently starting and stopping workflows, shared resources, polling, and instrument drivers.","remaining_difference":"It is a generic orchestration architecture, not a battery-cycling behavioral contract with cutoff precedence, current-sign rules, immutable execution records, and cross-adapter conformance acceptance.","source_ids":["S5"]},{"name":"PyBaMM Experiment","similarity":"Adjacent: provides a representation-independent declarative surface for cycling steps, durations, limits, cycles, and simulated execution.","remaining_difference":"It governs model simulation, not authorized control of heterogeneous physical cyclers or consistent adapter lifecycle and fault semantics.","source_ids":["S6"]},{"name":"Battery Data Format","similarity":"Adjacent: fixes cycler output units, current sign, time-series semantics, provenance-oriented identifiers, and common fields.","remaining_difference":"It standardizes recorded output, explicitly leaves some pause behavior instrument-defined, and does not govern actuation or runtime transitions.","source_ids":["S4"]}],"distinctive_claim_remaining":"After holding protocol, scripted observations, and injected faults constant, two structurally independent non-actuating adapters that conform to an explicit CyclingSession state machine will produce identical abstract transitions, cutoff winner, terminal reason, typed errors, timestamp semantics, abort postcondition, and immutable provenance record; mutation controls that invert sign, bypass arming, or select the wrong cutoff will be rejected. This is narrower than general vendor-neutral protocol translation and is falsified by any preregistered semantic divergence or by needing vendor step/status concepts in the public contract.","confidence":"HIGH"},"implementation_evidence":{"support":"STRONG","rationale":"All main software ingredients are established: declarative cycling procedures and simulation, vendor-neutral parsing, asynchronous resource APIs, and official vendor SDKs. A two-fake, non-actuating prototype has no necessary personal data, regulatory submission, or physical side effects. Production feasibility is conditional on vendor SDK licenses, supported operating systems and techniques, capability disclosure, timing semantics, hardware-in-the-loop qualification, laboratory change control, and preservation of independent hardware safety limits. Software conformance cannot establish calibration, control bandwidth, measurement accuracy, scientific equivalence, or physical safety.","source_ids":["S3","S5","S6","S7","S8"]},"scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"Avoiding silent protocol changes, wasted long-duration channel time, ambiguous failures, and irreproducible provenance could materially improve laboratory reliability, although no effect size has been measured.","source_ids":["S1","S3"]},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":4,"rationale":"Commercial, community, research, and government actors are already investing in cross-vendor protocol/data standardization and laboratory automation; pull for the narrower runtime contract is inferred rather than directly expressed.","source_ids":["S2","S3","S4","S5"]},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"Lifecycle, fault, abort, and no-actuation semantics add a testable runtime layer beyond procedure syntax and output schemas, but Ionworks already covers substantial protocol validation and execution simulation.","source_ids":["S2","S3","S4"]},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The exact lifecycle oracle may be distinctive, but it composes established interface-contract testing with several very close battery-specific abstractions; broad novelty is implausible and unmeasured.","source_ids":["S2","S3","S5","S6"]},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"Vendor-neutral parsers, simulators, asynchronous APIs, and vendor SDKs make a simulator-only prototype technically credible; asynchronous races and real firmware semantics remain untested.","source_ids":["S3","S5","S6","S8"]},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"Software owners can authorize an isolated fake-driver prototype, but physical deployment requires laboratory, equipment, safety, and possibly vendor approval; no named laboratory has committed.","source_ids":["S5","S7","S8"]},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"Two fakes, fixed traces, seeded operation sequences, fault injection, and mutation controls form a bounded, low-risk experiment with explicit falsifiers.","source_ids":["S3","S5","S6"]},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"Pre-actuation validation, explicit terminal states, idempotent abort, and mutation testing could catch consequential errors before cell connection, while hardware interlocks must remain authoritative.","source_ids":["S3","S7"]},"scalability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A generated interface and reusable black-box oracle can scale across adapters, but each vendor capability envelope, SDK, firmware generation, and instrument qualification creates recurring integration work.","source_ids":["S5","S8"]}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Preregister the contract; implement two deliberately different fake adapters, 40 fixed traces, 300 seeded sequences, fault injection, three or more mutation controls, immutable trace capture, and a short evidence report.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Approximately 3-8 engineer-weeks using open-source test tooling.","No physical equipment, vendor credentials, paid SDK, laboratory network, or cell is used.","Existing PyBaMM-style procedure fixtures may be reused conceptually but no production integration is attempted."],"source_ids":["S3","S5","S6"]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Harden the schema and conformance runner, integrate one or two vendor SDK sandboxes, conduct security and failure-mode review, and build hardware-in-the-loop qualification tooling without general laboratory rollout.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Roughly 0.5-1.5 engineer-years across automation, test, and electrochemistry roles.","Vendor SDK access and test instruments are available but procurement prices and license terms were not verified.","This band excludes modifications to cycler firmware or safety interlocks."],"source_ids":["S5","S8"]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Qualify two cycler families in one laboratory, obtain equipment-custodian and safety approvals, validate calibration and timing envelopes, train users, migrate selected protocols, and establish monitoring and rollback.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["One laboratory, two cycler families, and a limited protocol family are in scope.","Includes resource-equivalent labor, reserved channel time, validation cells, documentation, training, and contingency.","No new high-power cycler, chamber, facility electrical work, or firmware development is included."],"source_ids":["S7","S8"]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Contract stewardship, regression testing across SDK and firmware changes, incident review, adapter maintenance, trace retention, and periodic requalification.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Approximately 0.5-1.5 FTE plus test-channel time and ordinary software infrastructure.","Two vendor families and one laboratory are maintained.","Vendor license, support, and cloud prices remain unverified."],"source_ids":["S5","S8"]}},"verified_pipeline_gates":{"externally_supported_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"Independent research, an industry standards organization, and a commercial first-party product all document fragmented battery practices and vendor-specific cycler formats or semantics with consequential workflow costs. The exact frequency of runtime adapter divergence remains a gap but does not negate the visible underlying problem.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S4"]},"externally_credible_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"Ionworks is an existing implementer of cross-vendor protocol tooling, the Battery Data Alliance is a standards steward, and DOE/USABC provide credible procedure authority. No actor has committed to this exact contract, so this gate establishes credibility rather than adoption certainty.","source_ids":["S2","S3","S4","S7"]},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The remaining claim is explicitly limited to common runtime lifecycle, cutoff, fault, abort, timestamp, and provenance behavior across two independent fake adapters and can be falsified by preregistered divergence or surviving mutations.","source_ids":["S2","S3","S5"]},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A non-actuating two-fake comparison with fixed traces, seeded sequences, injected failures, mutation controls, and explicit halt rules is bounded, reversible, and comparator-based.","source_ids":["S3","S5","S6"]},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The next step excludes equipment connections, credentials, cells, laboratory networks, and physical actuation. Physical deployment remains separately gated by laboratory and safety authorities and cannot rely on software conformance alone.","source_ids":["S7","S8"]},"credible_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"Resource-equivalent bands are scoped by prototype, integration, single-laboratory launch, and recurring stewardship, with explicit labor and equipment assumptions. Confidence is low beyond the first experiment because vendor licensing, procurement, and qualification quotations were not found.","source_ids":["S5","S7","S8"]}},"next_evidence_step":"Preregister one non-actuating charge-rest-discharge contract, including sign, SI units, validation and arming rules, maximum duration and charge, voltage limits, deterministic cutoff precedence, observation and timestamp semantics, stale-data rules, typed terminal reasons, and idempotent abort. Implement a callback/queue fake and a polled/step-table fake. Run both on the same 40 fixed lifecycle traces and 300 seeded valid/invalid sequences while injecting simultaneous cutoff crossings, stale samples, delayed acknowledgments, communication loss, repeated aborts, and reconnects. Compare abstract transition sequences, cutoff winner, terminal reason, errors, timestamps, actuation flags, and immutable records. Include sign-inversion, wrong-cutoff, and start-before-arming mutants. Falsify the intervention if any conforming adapter diverges, any mutant survives, an invalid transition actuates, or vendor step/status concepts must enter the public contract. Use no hardware, cells, credentials, or laboratory network.","blocking_evidence":["No direct audit quantifies how often real cycling controllers depend on vendor commands, private driver state, step arrays, polling cadence, or firmware status.","No controlled comparison shows that two real instrument adapters execute the same declared procedure differently after physical capability and calibration are held constant.","No identified laboratory, equipment custodian, cycler vendor, or standards body has committed to own or adopt the exact CyclingSession contract.","The simulator-only oracle has not been executed, mutation-tested, or shown to cover asynchronous race conditions.","Vendor SDK license terms, support costs, protocol access, and firmware-version compatibility were not verified.","Hardware timing, calibration, control bandwidth, interlock behavior, and post-communication-loss states remain outside the software evidence.","No external quotations support deployment and recurring cost estimates."],"research_disposition":"PARTNERED_RESEARCH_PROGRAM","world_novelty_boundary":"World novelty, patentability, freedom to operate, market size, and realized impact were not measured. The search establishes substantial collision with vendor-neutral protocol languages, universal cycler protocol simulation, declarative experiment objects, output-data standards, and asynchronous laboratory resource APIs. Only the narrower runtime lifecycle-and-fault conformance claim remains for empirical differentiation; absence of an exact source is not evidence of world novelty.","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_version":0,"controller_recommendation":{"action":"STOP_EMPIRICAL_RESEARCH_NEEDED","repairable":false,"material_progress_observed":true,"progress_targets":["Execute the preregistered two-fake conformance and mutation experiment and publish all seeds, traces, divergences, and surviving mutants.","Audit at least two independently maintained cycling-controller integrations for vendor-state reach-throughs and classify each dependency as contractual, capability-related, or accidental.","Obtain a written adoption or evaluation statement from a named laboratory automation owner or cycler integration team for the lifecycle-and-fault layer specifically.","Produce a clause-by-clause differentiation matrix against Ionworks UCP, Battery Cycler Language, PyBaMM Experiment, Battery Data Format, and HELAO.","Before any hardware trial, document SDK licensing, supported firmware, capability disclosure, timing tolerances, safety-authority ownership, hardware interlocks, rollback, and qualification costs."],"reason":"Bounded web research verified the broad problem, credible actors, feasibility, and substantial prior-art collision, leaving a narrow falsifiable runtime claim. Deciding whether that claim works requires executing the fake-adapter oracle and mutation controls; web search cannot supply those results. Under the required controller rule, evidence requiring live testing receives an empirical-research stop, and every STOP is non-repairable."},"proposal_index":3}