AIchemy researchers Dr Xue Fang, Sean Gurung, and Miguel Ye, along with colleagues Aaron Hero Bernardino and Manahill Rabbani, based in the Greenaway lab, and the public engagement team (Andrew Brooks) at Imperial, delivered a “chemistry robot” interactive exhibition for the 2025 Imperial Discovery Day at The Invention Rooms to introduce the concepts of AI and automation, and their applications in chemistry. The project guided children aged 7 to 11 to program a LEGO robot using the WeDo graphic programming interface to synthesise slime by mixing sodium alginate and calcium chloride solutions.
Dr Xue Fang explained “we guided the children to modify the morphology and degree of polymerisation of the slime by varying the starting position and pouring speed: dropwise addition of sodium alginate into calcium chloride solution produced well-defined spherical slime beads, whereas rapid, continuous pouring generated long strands (see photos below). Colouring dyes were introduced to enhance the engagement. By tuning the rotating speed and timing of the robot, the children experienced a simplified form of parameter optimisation used in real-world automated chemistry workflows.”
