Although most contemporary and envisioned microfluidic systems are entirely passive or have limited control capabilities, future microfluidic systems require detailed sequenced control of valves and other elements. For this software-control of transport and processes for microfluidic systems under the control of temporal and/or event-driven scripts, script authoring and editing, functional libraries, and other development tools for process and configuration control are proposed with intent towards future standardization. Scripts can respond to external inputs and can comprise conditional-logic, temporal-logic, calculations, hierarchical structure, subroutines, macros, multi-thread and parallel execution operations, procedural calls, interrupts, real-time regulatory control calculations, and element resource allocation.
Scripts can be executed by a script reader, responsive to incoming signals and information, to produce temporal control sequences for operating microfluidic devices, emulation hardware, simulation software, process visualization, etc.
Script authoring/editing tools and readers can record and store information, and can interface to with commercial software, systems, languages, and protocols.