The contradiction between the importance of materials to modern society and their slow development process has led to the development of multiple methods to accelerate materials discovery. The recently emerged concept of intelligent laboratories integrates the developments in fields of high-throughput experimentation, automation, theoretical computing, and artificial intelligence to form a system that can autonomously carry out designed experiments and make scientific discoveries. We present the basic concepts and the foundations of this new research paradigm, demonstrate its typical application scenarios through case studies, and envision a collaborative human-machine meta laboratory in the future. Graphical Abstract

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