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Research Highlight

The INTERSECT Federated Architecture for the Laboratory of the Future

Topic:

Achievement: A team of researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) released the initial draft of the Interconnected Science Ecosystem (INTERSECT) architecture specification. The 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 novel approach consists of science use case design patterns, a system of systems architecture, and a microservice architecture. It features a novel approach, consisting of (1) science use case design patterns, (2) a system of systems architecture, and (3) 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 (HPC) center enables autonomous experiments, self-driving laboratories, smart manufacturing, and artificial intelligence (AI) 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 even designing experiments. A federated instrument-to-edge-to-center hardware/software architecture needs to provide (a) common 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 standard to enable adoption by science facilities world-wide. The INTERSECT architecture enables science breakthroughs using intelligent networked systems, instruments, and facilities with an open federated hardware/software architecture for the laboratory of the future.

The elements of the INTERSECT architecture in the context of the ecosystem for interconnected smart laboratories. CSMD ORNL Computer Science and Mathematics Division
The elements of the INTERSECT architecture in the context of the ecosystem for interconnected smart laboratories.

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.

Sponsor/Funding: ORNL LDRD INTERSECT Initiative

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

Team: Swen Boehm, Michael Brim, Jack Lange, Thomas Naughton, Patrick Widener, Ben Mintz, Rohit Srivastava, Suhas Somnath, Scott Atchley, and Elke Arenholz (ORNL)

Citations and DOIs:

  • Christian Engelmann, Olga Kuchar, Swen Boehm, Michael J. Brim, Thomas Naughton, Suhas Somnath, Scott Atchley, Jack Lange, Ben Mintz, and Elke Arenholz. The INTERSECT Open Federated Architecture for the Laboratory of the Future. In 18th Smoky Mountains Computational Sciences & Engineering Conference (SMC) 2022, pages 173-190, August 24-25, 2022. Springer, Cham. ISBN 978-3-031-23605-1. DOI 10.1007/978-3-031-23606-8_11.
  • Michael Brim and Christian Engelmann. INTERSECT Architecture Specification: Microservice Architecture (Version 0.5). Technical Report, ORNL/TM-2022/2715, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA, September 1, 2022. DOI 10.2172/1902805.
  • Christian Engelmann and Suhas Somnath. INTERSECT Architecture Specification: Use Case Design Patterns (Version 0.5). Technical Report, ORNL/TM-2022/2681, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA, September 1, 2022. DOI 10.2172/1896984.
  • Olga A. Kuchar, Swen Boehm, Thomas Naughton, Suhas Somnath, Ben Mintz, Jack Lange, Scott Atchley, Rohit Srivastava, and Patrick Widener. INTERSECT Architecture Specification: System-of-systems Architecture (Version 0.5). Technical Report, ORNL/TM-2022/2717, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA, September 1, 2022. DOI 10.2172/1968700.


Summary: The recently initial draft of the 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 novel approach consists of science use case design patterns, a system of systems architecture, and a microservice architecture. It features a novel approach, consisting of (1) science use case design patterns, (2) a system of systems architecture, and (3) a microservice architecture.