Awesome Physical AI for Science 🧬🤖
A curated collection of resources for Physical AI for Science — where robotics, laboratory automation, and AI agents converge to accelerate scientific discovery.
Physical AI for Science represents the integration of embodied intelligence (robots, automated instruments, sensors) with AI-driven decision-making to create autonomous or semi-autonomous scientific research systems. This includes self-driving laboratories, robotic experimentation, AI-guided experimental design, and multi-agent systems for scientific workflows.
Key Themes: Self-Driving Labs · Lab Automation · AI Agents for Science · Robotic Experimentation · Closed-Loop Discovery · Digital Workers for Research
🧪 Self-Driving Lab Systems
System
Institution
Domain
Key Feature
Reference
OpenAI + Ginkgo Bioworks OpenAI / Ginkgo
Biology
🔥 GPT-5 + cloud lab, 36k experiments, 40% cost reduction in cell-free protein synthesis
bioRxiv 2026
A-Lab LBNL Berkeley
Materials
Autonomous solid-state synthesis, 43 materials in 17 days
Nature 2023
Coscientist CMU
Chemistry
GPT-4 + robotic synthesis, palladium cross-coupling
Nature 2023
Mobile Robot Chemist U Liverpool
Chemistry
Autonomous mobile robots for exploratory synthesis
Nature 2024
ORGANA U Toronto
Chemistry
Franka robot + LLM planning
Matter 2024
Rainbow NC State / Multi-institution
Nanomaterials
Multi-robot SDL, parallelized nanocrystal synthesis
Nature Comm 2025
DOLPHIN Fudan / Shanghai AI Lab
General Science
LLM generates ideas → experiments → evaluation → iteration
ACL 2025
AutoLabs Multi-institution
Chemistry
Cognitive multi-agent with self-correction
arXiv 2025
SDL for Nanophotonics —
Photonics
Autonomous experimentation for spontaneous emission
Nature Comm 2025
SDL for Solid-State Lasers —
Materials/Photonics
Discovery of tunable organic emitters
Nature Comm 2026
AI Enzyme Engineering —
Biology
Generalized platform for autonomous enzyme engineering
Nature Comm 2025
Flow-Driven SDL —
Materials
10× data intensification for materials discovery
Nature Chem Eng 2025
⚠️ Note : The A-Lab Nature 2023 paper received a correction in January 2026 , with some questions remaining about the claimed new materials.
Multi-Agent Scientific Systems
System
Description
Year
Reference
MARS 19 LLM agents + 16 tools, hierarchical architecture for materials discovery
2026
Matter 2026 / phys.org
Robin First AI to autonomously discover and validate novel therapeutic candidate (ripasudil for dAMD)
2025
arXiv / FutureHouse
ChemAgents Task Manager + Literature Reader + Experiment Designer + Computation Performer + Robot Operator
2025
JACS 2025
Tippy Production-ready AI agents for DMTA cycle in drug discovery
2025
arXiv
Aleks Multi-agent autonomous discovery in plant science
2025
arXiv
VirSci Virtual scientists for Science of Science
2025
ACL 2025
OriGene Virtual disease biologist for therapeutic target discovery
2025
bioRxiv 2025
Agent Laboratory Literature review → experiment → report writing pipeline
2025
arXiv 2025
End-to-End AI Scientist Systems
System
Description
Achievement
Reference
AI Scientist v1 End-to-end automated research pipeline
Sakana AI 2024
AI Scientist v2 Workshop-level automated discovery
First AI-generated peer-reviewed paper (ICLR 2025 Workshop)
arXiv 2025
⚠️ Independent evaluation (ACM SIGIR Forum 2025) found mixed results, noting some claims may be overstated.
Platform
Institution
Description
Link
MADSci Argonne National Lab
Modular Autonomous Discovery for Science toolkit
AD-SDL
LabClaw Open-source AI infrastructure for scientific labs — 5-layer architecture with self-evolving agents
GitHub
Polybot Center for Nanoscale Materials
Self-driving lab for polymer science
polybot-nexus
Opentrons Flex Opentrons
Open-source liquid handling robots
Opentrons
Chemspeed Chemspeed
High-throughput automated synthesis
Commercial
Mobile ALOHA Stanford
Bimanual mobile manipulation for labs
GitHub
ABB Robotics ABB
AI-driven collaborative robots for labs
SLAS 2026 Demo
Ginkgo Cloud Lab Ginkgo Bioworks
Remote automated wet lab (robots execute experiments)
ginkgo.bio
Platform
Provider
Description
Link
Cellario HighRes Biosolutions
🔥 Agentic AI scheduling + orchestration for lab automation
highres.com
FlexPod HighRes
Configurable Lab Automation Platform
highres.com
IvoryOS —
Drag-and-drop web interface for SDL workflow design
Nature Comm 2025
AlabOS —
Python reconfigurable workflow management for SDL
RSC Digital Discovery 2024
🔥 Breaking : HighRes + Opentrons partnership (Feb 2026) — Industry's first AI Agent-to-Agent lab automation workflow
🧠 AI Agents for Scientific Discovery LLM-based Scientific Agents
Agent
Focus
Key Innovation
Reference
GPT-5 Lab Agent Biology
🔥 Autonomous wet lab experiments via cloud lab, 36k experiments
OpenAI 2026
ChemCrow Chemistry
LLM + 18 chemistry tools integration
arXiv 2023
SciAgents Materials
Graph reasoning + multi-agent for materials design
arXiv 2024
Lang-PINN Physics
LLM builds Physics-Informed Neural Networks from natural language
ICLR 2026
AI Scientist General
End-to-end automated research pipeline
Sakana AI 2024
OpenAI Deep Research General
Autonomous multi-step research agent
OpenAI 2025
Experiment Design & Active Learning
Tool
Description
Reference
Bayesian Optimization Standard for adaptive experimental design in SDLs
Various
SEEK Scientific Exploration with Expert Knowledge for scanning probe microscopy
Digital Discovery 2025
BOSS Bayesian Optimization Structure Search
2024
🔬 Domain-Specific Platforms Drug Discovery & Life Sciences
Platform
Type
Description
Robin (FutureHouse)System
First autonomous therapeutic candidate discovery (ripasudil for dAMD)
Insilico Medicine Company
AI-driven end-to-end drug discovery
Owkin Company
Multimodal clinical AI + federated learning
ConcertAI Company
Real-world data + agentic AI for oncology
Hippocratic AI + Grove AI Company
Agentic AI for pharma R&D and clinical trials
Causaly Company
Knowledge graph + AI for life sciences
NVIDIA BioNeMo Framework
Generative AI for drug discovery
AlphaFold 3 Tool
Protein structure & interaction prediction
OpenFold3 Tool
Open-source AlphaFold3 reimplementation
Boltz 2 Tool
Open protein structure prediction
Platform
Type
Description
A-Lab Lab
Autonomous materials synthesis (LBNL)
MARS System
Multi-agent robotic system for materials (SIAT, CAS)
NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo Framework
Open-source physics AI
Materials Project Database
Open materials data + ML models
AFLOW Database
Automatic FLOW for materials discovery
Platform
Type
Description
Coscientist System
GPT-4 autonomous chemistry lab
RDKit Library
Open-source cheminformatics
DeepChem Library
Deep learning for molecular ML
IBM RXN Tool
AI-powered retrosynthesis
Platform
Type
Description
Ginkgo Cloud Lab Lab
GPT-5 autonomous protein synthesis
AlphaFold DB Database
200M+ protein structures
UniProt Database
Protein sequence and function
Hugging Face Bio Hub
Bio ML models
Platform
Type
Description
DeepLabCut Tool
Markerless multi-animal pose estimation
SLEAP Tool
Multi-animal pose tracking (top-down + bottom-up)
SpikeInterface Tool
Unified spike sorting framework (10+ backends)
Suite2p Tool
Two-photon calcium imaging pipeline
CaImAn Tool
Calcium imaging analysis (CNMF, online)
MNE-Python Tool
MEG/EEG analysis
PyNWB Standard
Neurodata Without Borders file I/O
NeuroConv Tool
47+ formats → NWB conversion
Pynapple Tool
Neural time series analysis
keypoint-MoSeq Tool
Unsupervised behavioral syllable discovery
DataJoint Platform
Scientific data pipeline management
DANDI Archive Database
790+ dandisets, open neuroscience data
Allen Brain Observatory Database
Visual coding, connectivity atlas
OpenNeuro Database
1,800+ BIDS neuroimaging datasets
🛠️ Software Frameworks & Tools Self-Driving Lab Software
Tool
Stars
Description
Link
AI-Scientist End-to-end automated research pipeline
GitHub
MADSci Modular framework for autonomous discovery
GitHub
LabClaw Open-source AI infrastructure for scientific labs — 5-layer architecture with self-evolving agents
GitHub
IvoryOS —
No-code web interface for SDL workflows
Nature Comm 2025
AlabOS —
Python reconfigurable SDL management
Digital Discovery
AI for Science Agent Platforms
Platform
Provider
Description
Link
Claude for Life Sciences Anthropic
MCP connectors + Agent Skills for life science research
anthropic.com
Claude Scientific Skills K-Dense AI
140+ ready-to-use scientific skills
GitHub
Google Vertex AI Agent Engine Google Cloud
Life science R&D agent framework
Google Cloud
OpenAI for Science OpenAI
Prism LaTeX + GPT-5 lab agent + FrontierScience
openai.com/science
Claude in Microsoft Foundry MS + Anthropic
Healthcare & life science agentic workflows
microsoft.com
MCP Servers for Life Sciences
MCP Server
Provider
Description
Auth Required
PubMed NCBI/Anthropic
Search biomedical literature
None
BioRender BioRender
Scientific illustrations & diagrams
Free account
Synapse.org Sage Bionetworks
Collaborative research data management
Free account
Scholar Gateway Wiley
Peer-reviewed scientific publications
Free account
10x Genomics Cloud 10x Genomics
Single-cell & spatial analysis in natural language
Paid account
Benchling Benchling
Lab notebooks, experiments, records
Enterprise
Scientific Skills (Claude Code / Agent Skills Standard)
From claude-scientific-skills — 140+ skills across:
Category
Count
Examples
Scientific Databases 28+
OpenAlex, PubMed, ChEMBL, UniProt, COSMIC, ClinVar, KEGG, PDB
Python Packages 55+
RDKit, Scanpy, BioPython, DeepChem, PyTorch Lightning
Lab Integrations 15+
Benchling, DNAnexus, LatchBio, OMERO, Protocols.io, Opentrons
Analysis & Communication 30+
Literature review, scientific writing, peer review, slides, posters
Clinical & Research 10+
Clinical decision support, treatment plans, hypothesis generation
Bioinformatics Skills 4
Single-cell RNA-seq QC, scvi-tools, Nextflow pipelines, Allotrope conversion
Tool
Description
Link
LangGraph Multi-agent orchestration
GitHub
CrewAI Role-based multi-agent framework
GitHub
AutoGen Microsoft multi-agent conversations
GitHub
Lab Automation Standards & Protocols
Standard
Description
Link
SiLA 2 Standardization in Lab Automation protocol
sila-standard.com
Bluesky NSLS-II data acquisition framework
blueskyproject.io
MuJoCo Physics simulation for robotics
GitHub
Isaac Gym / Isaac Lab GPU-accelerated robot learning
NVIDIA
Self-Driving Labs / Cloud Labs
Company
Focus
Stage
Ginkgo Bioworks 🔥 Cloud lab + GPT-5 autonomous biology
Public (NYSE: DNA)
Emerald Cloud Lab Remote-access automated lab
Growth
Strateos Robotic cloud lab
Growth
Culture Biosciences Automated bioreactors
Growth
Arctoris Fully automated drug discovery lab
Growth
SciSpot Self-driving lab platform for life sciences
Growth
Company
Focus
Stage
FutureHouse Robin multi-agent scientific discovery
Growth
Insilico Medicine End-to-end AI drug discovery
Late
Recursion AI + biology platform
Public
Isomorphic Labs AlphaFold → drug design (Alphabet)
Growth
Owkin Federated clinical AI
Growth
Causaly Knowledge graph for life sciences
Growth
Lab Automation Hardware & Software
Company
Product
Focus
HighRes Biosolutions 🔥 Cellario + FlexPod
Agentic AI lab orchestration
Opentrons OT-2/Flex
Affordable liquid handling
Hamilton STAR/Vantage
High-end liquid handling
Chemspeed SWING/iSynth
High-throughput synthesis
Beckman Coulter Biomek
Life science automation
ABB Robotics Collaborative robots
AI-driven lab automation
🔬 Top Research — Autonomous Lab Systems 🔬 Top Research — Closed-Loop & Active Learning 🔬 Top Research — LLM Agents in Labs 🔬 Top Research — Safety, Infrastructure & Standards 🏥 Clinical / Biomedical AI
Benchmark
Domain
Description
FrontierScience General
OpenAI benchmark for AI scientific reasoning
ScienceWorld General
Interactive text-based science experiments
Materials Project Materials
150k+ materials with computed properties
AlphaFold DB Biology
200M+ predicted protein structures
PubChem Chemistry
100M+ chemical compounds
ChEMBL Drug Discovery
Bioactive molecules with drug-like properties
ScienceAgentBench General
102-task benchmark for AI science agents (ICLR 2025)
AI for Science & Autonomous Research Contributions welcome! Please read the contribution guidelines first.
Maintained by Cong — Researcher in Physical AI for Science, Agentic Systems & Embodied Intelligence @ Harvard
