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Research Highlight

The INTERSECT Federated Architecture for the Scientific Laboratory of the Future

Achievement: A team of researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) released version 1.0 of the Interconnected Science Ecosystem (INTERSECT) architecture specification and applied it to autonomous experiments and self-driving laboratories at ORNL. The open INTERSECT architecture connects scientific instruments and robot-controlled laboratories with computing and data resources at the edge, the Cloud or the high-performance computing center to enable autonomous experiments, self-driving laboratories, smart manufacturing, and artificial intelligence driven design, discovery and evaluation. Its a novel approach consists of science use case design patterns, a system of systems architecture, and a microservice architecture.

 

Significance and Impact: Connecting scientific instruments and robot-controlled laboratories with computing and data resources at the edge, the Cloud, or the high-performance computing center enables autonomous experiments, self-driving laboratories, smart manufacturing, and artificial intelligence driven design, discovery and evaluation. The goal is to autonomously collect, transfer, store, process, curate, and archive scientific data and reduce human-in-the-loop needs for controlling, steering and designing experiments. The INTERSECT federated instrument-to-edge-to-center hardware/software ecosystem provides (a) uniform interfaces that leverage community and custom software; (b) pluggability that permits adaptable solutions, reuse of existing solutions, and digital twins for testing and evaluation; and (c) an open architecture to enable adoption by science facilities world-wide. Its architecture enables science breakthroughs using intelligent networked systems, instruments, and facilities for the scientific laboratory of the future. One example is autonomous additive manufacturing, a 3D metal printing process with a thermomechanical simulation in a live feedback loop to control the residual stress in a printed part to address a grand challenge — building parts that are ready and safe to use immediately (i.e., “born qualified”).

 

Research Details

  • Formalized science use case design patterns with abstract descriptions of the involved hardware and software components and their work, data and control flows.
  • Developed a system of systems architecture with detailed design decisions about the involved hardware and software components from different points of view, i.e., user, data, logical, physical, operational, and standards.
  • Created a microservice architecture with detailed design decisions about software microservices, including their functionalities, capabilities, and compositions with control, work and data flows.
  • Applied the science use case design patterns, system of systems architecture, and microservice architecture to autonomous experiments and self driving laboratories, such as autonomous additive manufacturing.
  • Coordinated the relationships between the INTERSECT architecture and the DOE’s Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) architecture, including its Architecture Blueprint Activity patterns: time-sensitive, data integration-intensive, and long-term campaign.

Sponsor/Funding: ORNL LDRD INTERSECT Initiative

PI and affiliation: Christian Engelmann, Computer Science and Mathematics Division (ORNL)

Team: Michael Brim, Swen Boehm, Olga Kuchar, Jack Lange, Thomas Naughton, Patrick Widener, Stephen DeWitt, Ben Mintz, Rob Moore, Elke Arenholz, Scott Atchley, Suhas Somnath, and Rohit Srivastava

Citation and DOI: Christian Engelmann, Michael Brim, Swen Boehm, Olga Kuchar, Jack Lange, Thomas Naughton, Patrick Widener, Ben Mintz, Rob Moore, Elke Arenholz, Scott Atchley, Suhas Somnath, and Rohit Srivastava. INTERSECT Architecture Documentation. URL: https://intersect-architecture.readthedocs.io

 

The INTERSECT Federated Architecture for the Scientific Laboratory of the Future
Fig. 1. The work, control and data flow between the infrastructure systems of the autonomous additive manufacturing experiment, designed using the logical view of the INTERSECT system of systems architecture.

Summary: Automation and autonomy can enable revolutionary scientific advances by coordinating a diverse array of experimental and computational capabilities more efficiently and more effectively than current hands-on approaches. This experiment creates an autonomous system to plan and adaptively control additive manufacturing build processes. It involves multiple characterization modes, computation across the edge-to-center computing continuum, and multiple scientific user facilities. The objective of the autonomous additive manufacturing (AAM) system is to control the residual stress in a part to address a grand challenge – building parts that are ready and safe to use immediately (i.e., “born qualified”). The AAM system is deployed at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF), Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) as a cross-facility instrument-science workflow. Its INTERSECT architecture consists of science use case design patterns, a system of systems architecture, and a microservices architecture. For more details see: https://intersect-architecture.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/aam/.