Major upgrade of the articulated inspection arm control system to fulfill daily operation requirements

Abstract An articulated inspection arm (AIA) has been developed by CEA for visual inspection between pulses inside the Tore Supra tokamak vacuum vessel without breaking temperature and vacuum conditions. The eight meters length robot is composed of a shuttle and six articulated segments with a video camera at its end. A demonstration prototype has been achieved in 2008 at Tore Supra (Gargiulo, 2007; Houry, 2008; Perrot, 2003). A project to upgrade the AIA into a fully operational robot has been undertaken by IRFM and ASIPP in an Associated Laboratory. It will be in operation first in the EAST machine and afterwards in Tore Supra in its WEST (W/Tungsten Environment in Steady-state Tokamak) configuration where it is of paramount importance to survey possible degradation of W component surface. The control system of the robot has been extensively upgraded. The effort has been focused on three areas: (1) improvement of the arm position accuracy, (2) increase of the operational robustness, (3) use of a powerful graphical user interface including simulation of trajectories and robot deployment capabilities in a 3D viewer environment. The aim of this paper is to detail the architecture of the AIA control system.