Automation in Beamline Control and Data Acquisition

 16.-18.01.2019 in Adlershof

In recent years the control system community noticed specific demands connected with automation and data acquisition for user facility experiments. Experiment control systems must interact with a variety of instrument hardware, sample environment equipment, detectors and data acquisition electronics. These control systems must be flexible and easy to use for experiments with quick turnaround and a heterogeneous user community.

The HZB will host this international workshop to address the core requirements of experiment automation, scanning, sequencing, run control, live feedback, online data reduction and visualization, detector and data acquisition.

Specific focus is guided by a vision and desire: beamline hardware components should be describable in close correspondence to the elements of photon transport simulation tools. Then software for experiment manipulation and flow control could work with these digital twins. This would provide options for general experiment set-up and scanning as well as for tuning of the photon creation and delivery process. At least instrument schematics with drill down capabilities would become feasible.

The workshop is intended to bring together engineers, beamline scientists and experimental data acquisition experts in discussions of achievements, development ideas, lessons learned and challenges. The forward-looking goal is to exchange best practices, identify trends and visions and explore capabilities to satisfy user expectations of a highly mobile scientific community.