CORBA & ASTM E1989-98—A NOVEL APPROACH TO DISTRIBUTED INSTRUMENT CONTROL

1. Poster Handout CORBA & ASTM E1989-98—A NOVEL APPROACH TO DISTRIBUTED INSTRUMENT CONTROL Torsten Staab TSTAAB@LANL.GOV January 22-26, 2000 Palm Springs, CA

2. Poster Outline • The Objective • The Technologies • ASTM E1989-98 LECIS • CORBA • The Result • The Benefits • The Prototype • Contact Information

3. The Objective The main objective of this hybrid approach is to provide an enabling software technology that allows for standardized, flexible, and hardware-independent instrument control. Today, most automated laboratory systems represent islands of automation. Although the instruments used in these systems may be highly integrated and able to communicate with each other, in most cases they are unable to communicate with the outside world (e.g., other automation systems). Most automation systems are designed for one task only, which, due to a lack of data and control standards, considerably limits the reuse of system components. This poster describes a new approach for the automation and integration of laboratory systems that will foster the connectivity and reuse of laboratory automation system components.

4. The Technologies This hybrid approach to instrument control is based upon two standards—CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) and ASTM E1989-98, also know as LECIS (Laboratory Equipment Control Interface Specification). While CORBA is aimed at distributed, object-oriented computing, the ASTM E1989-98 standard defines a generic control interface for laboratory equipment. The marriage of both technologies allows us to represent instruments and controllers in the form of objects that are able to interact over a network via standardized, ASTM E1989-98 compliant interfaces.

5. ASTM E1989-98 (LECIS) What is ASTM E1989-98? The ASTM E1989-98 standard (aka LECIS (Laboratory Equipment Control Interface Specification) defines a uniform remote control interface for laboratory equipment. LECIS is based on a core set of standard equipment behaviors, described in the form of interactions. ASTM E1989-98 Origins The ASTM E1989-98 standard is based upon the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Consortium for Automated Analytical Laboratory Systems (CAALS) Common Command Set and Sandia National Laboratory’s General Equipment Interface Specification.

6. ASTM E1989-98 Primary Interactions • ASTM E1989-98 defines the following primary interactions: • Control Flow(regulates instrument initialization, configuration, and regular operations) • Local/Remote Control Mode(manages instrument’s local/remote control mode transitions)

7. ASTM E1989-98 Secondary Interactions ASTM E1989-98 defines the following secondary interactions: • Processing (allows execution of instrument methods) • Status (retrieves status of interactions from instrument) • Lock/Unlock (locks/unlocks instrument’s data/material ports) • Abort (aborts interactions) • Alarm (indicates instrument errors/exceptions) • Item Available Notification (data/material availability notification) • Next Event Request (requests next event from instrument)

8. CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) What is CORBA? CORBA is an object-oriented middleware standard that enables objects (here: instruments and controllers) to discover each other and interoperate in an heterogeneous network environment. CORBA Origins CORBA was defined by the OMG (Object Management Group, www.omg.org), a consortium of over 800 software and hardware vendors.

9. CORBA Facilities Distributed Documents, Information Management, System Management, Task Manager App Objects CORBA CORBA Services Naming, Persistence, Life Cycle, Properties, Collection, Events, Security, Trader, Licensing, Transactions, Startup, Time, Relationships, Security, Query, ... The Object Management Architecture CORBA provides a number of predefined facilities and services that are very useful for the development of distributed laboratory systems.

10. The CORBA Interface Definition Language (IDL) In general, CORBA IDL is used to define the interface/services provided by an object. An interface can consists of methods and/or attributes. A CORBA IDL Example: interface Balance { readonly attribute string manufacturer; readonly attribute string model; readonly attribute string serialnumber; float getWeight(); string getManufacturer(); //… }

11. The CORBA Interface Definition Language (IDL) (Cont’d) In the context of this poster, the CORBA IDL is used to define control interfaces for instruments that are based upon the ASTM E1989-98 instrument control standard. For example, the ASTM E1989-98 LECIS standard defines an interaction called Control Flow, that regulates the initialization, configuration, and normal operations of any type of instrument. The Control Flow interaction, for example, defines standardized commands, such as INIT, SETUP, PAUSE, RESUME, etc.

12. The CORBA Interface Definition Language (IDL) (Cont’d) Using CORBA IDL, the ASTM E1989-98 Control Flow interaction can be described as follows: interface ControlFlowInteraction: Interaction { void init(); void setup(in string configID, in any configParameter); void clear(in ClearType type); void pause(); void resume(); void estop(); } This CORBA LECIS-based interface, for example, would enable an instrument controller to initialize, configure, pause, etc. any instrument uniformly over a network.

13. The Result This effort resulted in a set of CORBA IDL and ASTM E 1989-98-based interface definitions that can be used for distributed, uniform, computing platform-, programming language-, and device-independent control of any type of laboratory instrument. A draft document of these ASTM E1989-98 IDL definitions can be downloaded at http://www.lecis.org.

14. <<interface>> ProcessingInteraction <<interface>> NextEventInteraction <<interface>> StatusInteraction <<interface>> ControlFlowInteraction <<interface>> Interaction <<interface>> LockUnlockInteraction <<interface>> LocalRemoteControlInteraction <<interface>> AbortInteraction <<interface>> AlarmInteraction <<interface>> ItemAvailableInteraction The ASTM E1989-98 CORBA IDL Interfaces LECIS Primary Interactions LECIS Secondary Interactions

15. The Benefits • Benefits of using CORBA and ASTM E1989-98 • is low-level communication protocol-independent • is computing platform-independent • is programming language-independent • allows device-independent remote control • allows the control of instruments regardless of their location • defines instrument control interfaces independently of implementations • fosters plug-and-play of instruments • allows for hot swappable instruments, thereby reducing system downtimes • reduces vendor dependence • reduces instrument interfacing costs and efforts

16. The Prototype System The ASTM E1989-98 CORBA IDL prototype system consists of two components (CORBA objects)—an instrument controller (Task Sequence Controller) and an instrument (Zymark’s universal plate handling robot TwisterTM). The Task Sequence Controller and the Zymark TwisterTM CORBA objects are both implemented in 100% pure Java. This prototype system demonstrates how to build a fully distributed, plug-and-play based laboratory automation system with the new ASTM E1989-98 CORBA IDL specification.

17. The Prototype System Architecture Zymark TwisterTM Controller (TSC) 4..x. Interaction-based Control 3. Twister Object Reference TCP/IP Network 2. Search for Twister Object 1. Register Twister Object CORBA Naming Service

18. Contact Information For more information on the ASTM E1989-98 standard and CORBA/DCOM/TCP-IP/RS-232 related commercial activities visit http://www.lecis.org