PETRA III Hall at DESY. Photo credit: Anne Gaertner
ROCK-IT aims to create automated and remote-accessed experiment environments for users of all experience levels, reducing access barriers and speeding up innovation. Currently, only relatively simple experimental techniques based on standardized sample and measurement procedures—such as macromolecular crystallography, standard powder diffraction, and microtomography—are commonly conducted in remote-access and/or mail-in mode. The ROCK-IT demonstrator aims to extend this capability to include complex in-situ and operando experiments, by automization and enabling remote access for all required tools.
The goal of ROCK-IT is to make these software tools easily transferable to other experiments and fields beyond synchrotron and neutron radiation applications. To achieve this goal, ROCK-IT is committed to enhancing remote-access protocols, developing a holistic experiment, and implementing machine learning (ML) for automated experiments, real-time data analysis, and robotic sample handling. Furthermore, achieving standardization at all levels of experimentation is another important goal for the project.
The idea of ROCK-IT developed after the Covid-19 pandemic caused a number of serious problems for user operations at large-scale facilities in Germany, due to travel restrictions and hygiene protocols. As some of the user operations could be maintained via mail-in and remote-access solutions, these created a non-sustainable load on the beamline staff. These experiences revealed that; by extending automation and robotics at beamlines and experimental stations more mail-in and remote-access experiments could be possible, leading to more resilient, sustainable, and effective user operations. Furthermore, the automation of these experiments will greatly benefit our environment, on which further information can be found here.