Liverpool's mobile robot chemist runs 688 experiments in 8 days and finds a 6× better photocatalyst
Andrew Cooper's group (Nature, July 2020) built a mobile robot that moved around a standard lab and ran 688 experiments over 8 days in a 10-variable space, guided by batched Bayesian optimisation. It found photocatalyst formulations about 6× more active for hydrogen production from water than the starting mixtures.
Key facts
- 688 experiments, 8 days, 10-dimensional search space
- ~6× improvement in hydrogen-evolution activity
- Operated autonomously, including nights and weekends
Science result
- Field
- chemistry / photocatalysis / self-driving labs
- Problem
- Optimising photocatalyst formulations for hydrogen production
- Result
- Autonomous robotic search found a formulation ~6× more active than the baseline.
- AI system
- batched Bayesian optimisation
- Human role
- Humans designed the search space and robot workflow; experiments autonomous
- Verification
- Peer-reviewed in Nature
- Status
- confirmed
What happened
A humanoid-sized mobile robot used ordinary lab instruments and an optimisation algorithm to choose and run experiments by itself.
Why it matters
It is a landmark for self-driving laboratories, the physical half of the "AI scientist" vision.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
Related events
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- Berkeley's A-Lab claims 41 new materials from autonomous synthesis; after critiques Nature corrects it to 36 'inorganic' (not 'novel') materials ★★★
Sources (2)
id: 2020-07-08-mobile-robotic-chemist · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline