Toward Unified Autonomous Scattering Experiments: A Cross-Facility Case Study at ALS and PETRA III

Autonomous experiments rely on the integration of control, data acquisition, analysis, and decision-making frameworks. While such systems have been demonstrated at individual facilities, adapting them to additional instruments remains challenging due to differences in local infrastructure. We present a modular workflow that connects existing open-source tools for data access (Tiled), workflow orchestration (Prefect), analysis and visualization (pyFAI, Plotly Dash), and Gaussian-process-based adaptive sampling (gpCAM) into a unified framework for autonomous scattering experiments. The same configuration operates across two synchrotron beamlines (ALS 7.3.3 and PETRA III P03) with only minimal facility-specific adjustments, as shown in proof-of-concept demonstrations. This validates that a consistent design emphasizing modularity and shared interfaces can ease deployment across diverse experimental environments. The resulting framework provides a flexible foundation for extending autonomous control and analysis capabilities beyond a single beamline or instrument.

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Publication Details

Journal
Photon Science
Published
2026-03-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1021/photonsci.5c00044
Primary Topic
Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Toward Unified Autonomous Scattering Experiments: A Cross-Facility Case Study at ALS and PETRA III

Y. X. Wang, Damon English, Eric Euchler, Dylan McReynolds et al.
Photon Science
Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers
article

Toward Unified Autonomous Scattering Experiments: A Cross-Facility Case Study at ALS and PETRA III

Y. X. Wang, Damon English, Eric Euchler, Dylan McReynolds, Marcus M. Noack, F. Schlünzen, Anna Katharina Sambale, Alexander Hexemer, Eric Schaible, Enno Henn, Raja Vyshnavi Sriramoju, Chenhui Zhu, Tanny Chavez, Stephan V. Roth, Benedikt Sochor, Wiebke Koepp, Aidan H. Coffey, Sarathlal Koyiloth Vayalil
article en

Abstract

Autonomous experiments rely on the integration of control, data acquisition, analysis, and decision-making frameworks. While such systems have been demonstrated at individual facilities, adapting them to additional instruments remains challenging due to differences in local infrastructure. We present a modular workflow that connects existing open-source tools for data access (Tiled), workflow orchestration (Prefect), analysis and visualization (pyFAI, Plotly Dash), and Gaussian-process-based adaptive sampling (gpCAM) into a unified framework for autonomous scattering experiments. The same configuration operates across two synchrotron beamlines (ALS 7.3.3 and PETRA III P03) with only minimal facility-specific adjustments, as shown in proof-of-concept demonstrations. This validates that a consistent design emphasizing modularity and shared interfaces can ease deployment across diverse experimental environments. The resulting framework provides a flexible foundation for extending autonomous control and analysis capabilities beyond a single beamline or instrument.

Photon Science
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US), Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY (DE), Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research (DE), Ingenierie des Materiaux polymeres (FR), Innovation Cluster (Canada) (CA), Applied Mathematics (United States) (US), Universidad Politécnica de El Salvador (SV), Advanced Light Source, University of Southern Mississippi (US), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (SE)
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Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers
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