Historically, researchers in materials discovery have devised and tested options through some mix of hunches, informed speculation, and trial by error. But it's a difficult and time-consuming process simply given the vast array of possible substances and combinations, which can send researchers down numerous false paths. In the case of electrolyte ingredients, "you can mix and match them in billions of ways," says Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon, a co-author of the Nature Communications paper, and a cofounder and chief scientist at Aionics. He collaborated with Jay Whitacre, director of the university's Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and the co-principal investigator on the project, along with other Carnegie researchers to explore how robotics and machine learning could help. The promise of a system like Clio and Dragonfly is that it can rapidly work through a wider array of possibilities than human researchers can, and apply what it learns in a systematic way.