Chemical synthesis is state-of-the-art, and, therefore, it is generally based on chemical intuition or experience of researchers. The upgraded paradigm that incorporates automation technology and machine learning (ML) algorithms has recently been merged into almost every subdiscipline of chemical science, from material discovery to catalyst/reaction design to synthetic route planning, which often takes the form of unmanned systems. The ML algorithms and their application scenarios in unmanned systems for chemical synthesis were presented. The prospects for strengthening the connection between reaction pathway exploration and the existing automatic reaction platform and solutions for improving autonomation through information extraction, robots, computer vision, and intelligent scheduling were proposed.

Prior knowledge, including data from previous experiments and physical models, and relevant features are used to describe the materials. This information is used within a machine learning framework to make predictions that include error estimates. The results are used by an experimental design tool (for example, Global optimization) that suggests new experiments (synthesis and characterization) performed in this work, with the dual goals of model improvement and materials discovery. The results feed into a database, which provides input for the next iteration of the design loop. The green arrows represent the step-wise approach of the state-of-art using experiments or calculations, although few studies have demonstrated feedback.