Snail-inspired robotic swarms: a hybrid connector drives collective adaptation in unstructured outdoor environments.

Terrestrial self-reconfigurable robot swarms offer adaptable solutions for various tasks. However, most existing swarms are limited to controlled indoor settings, and often compromise stability due to their freeform connections. To address these issues, we present a snail robotic swarm system inspired by land snails, tailored for unstructured environments.

Autonomous discovery of optically active chiral inorganic perovskite nanocrystals through an intelligent cloud lab.

We constructed an intelligent cloud lab that integrates lab automation with cloud servers and artificial intelligence (AI) to detect chirality in perovskites. Driven by the materials acceleration operating system in cloud (MAOSIC) platform, on-demand experimental design by remote users was enabled in this cloud lab. By employing artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) technology, synthesis, characterization, and parameter optimization can be autonomously achieved.

Toward "On-Demand" Materials Synthesis and Scientific Discovery through Intelligent Robots.

A Materials Acceleration Operation System (MAOS) is designed, with unique language and compiler architecture. MAOS integrates with virtual reality (VR), collaborative robots, and a reinforcement learning (RL) scheme for autonomous materials synthesis, properties investigations, and self-optimized quality assurance. After training through VR, MAOS can work independently for labor and intensively reduces the time cost.

AIR-Chem: Authentic Intelligent Robotics for Chemistry.

The new era with prosperous artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technology is reshaping the materials discovery process in a more radical fashion. Here we present authentic intelligent robotics for chemistry (AIR-Chem), integrated with technological innovations in the AI and robotics fields, functionalized with modules including gradient descent-based optimization frameworks, multiple external field modulations, a real-time computer vision (CV) system, and automated guided vehicle (AGV) parts. AIR-Chem is portable and remotely controllable by cloud computing.