Simplified 3D illustration of the considered section of the ARES particle accelerator.

Learning to Do or Learning While Doing: Reinforcement Learning and Bayesian Optimisation for Online Continuous Tuning

J. Kaiser1, C. Xu2, A. Eichler1, A. Santamaria Garcia2, O. Stein1, E. Bründermann2, W. Kuropka1, H. Dinter1, F. Mayet1, T. Vinatier1, F. Burkart1, H. Schlarb1 1Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, 2 Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT arXiv Abstract Online tuning of real-world plants is a complex optimisation problem that continues to require manual intervention by experienced human operators. Autonomous tuning is a rapidly expanding field of research, where learning-based methods, such as Reinforcement Learning-trained Optimisation (RLO) and Bayesian optimisation (BO), hold great promise for achieving outstanding plant performance and reducing tuning times....

June 6, 2023 · 201 words · RL4AA Collaboration
Reinforcement learning loop for the ARES experimental area.

Learning-based Optimisation of Particle Accelerators Under Partial Observability Without Real-World Training

J. Kaiser, O. Stein, A. Eichler Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY 39th International Conference on Machine Learning Abstract In recent work, it has been shown that reinforcement learning (RL) is capable of solving a variety of problems at sometimes super-human performance levels. But despite continued advances in the field, applying RL to complex real-world control and optimisation problems has proven difficult. In this contribution, we demonstrate how to successfully apply RL to the optimisation of a highly complex real-world machine – specifically a linear particle accelerator – in an only partially observable setting and without requiring training on the real machine....

July 22, 2022 · 174 words · RL4AA Collaboration