Speaker
Description
The automation of repetitive tasks at FEL light-sources like the European XFEL allows to allocate staff more efficiently and increases reliability and safety. Recurrent procedures often require adjustments of various control parameters to maximize a measured quantity, for example, repositioning of optical components during beam-alignment to maximize intensity. In many cases an analytic form of the underlying objective function is not known. Moreover, movement speeds of the hardware components can be slow, rendering function sampling time-consuming.
In this contribution we present a flexible software approach using Bayesian optimization as an efficient sampling strategy for this type of optimization problems. At the European XFEL, the Karabo SCADA system is used to control the majority of instrumentation in the facility and handles the acquisition of hardware control parameters as well as scientific data. Hence, Karabo is well-suited as a basis for the implementation and application of automation routines. Our optimization algorithm is implemented in Karabo.
