What do you use to inspect a tokamak, while it is still online? And what is a tokamak in the first place?
A tokamak is a plasma confinement device that holds great promise for generating thermonuclear fusion, explained Energid Technologies in a statement released Thursday.
Due to extreme temperatures generated by thermonuclear fusion, a magnetic field, rather than a physical material, is used for containing the plasma.
So, what is plasma? In the physical universe, there are four forms that matter can take:, Liquid, gas, solid and plasma. The most common is actually plasma, because it is one of the forms of matter in stars. It is highly conductive of electricity; as such, it is the material that carries the current through a glass tube in millions of neon signs.
Energid Technologies of Cambridge, Mass., said Thursday it had deployed its software on the Articulated Inspection Arm (AIA) robot developed by the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM), of the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA), and the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP).
Following a proof of concept done on the French Tokamak Tore Supra/WEST in the Cadarache testing facility in southern France, the robot was upgraded and will be tested on the Chinese Tokamak EAST in Hefei before returning to France. The robot requires unique and complex control as its many joints navigate around obstacles and the toroidal shape of the tokamak. The control software must automatically avoid collisions with all surfaces within the vessel and must compensate for the dynamic properties of the robot, like sag.
A toroidal shape is common, as it is the shape of a donut.
“Using Actin’s control system and feature-rich 3D environment made the deployment of the robot much easier for the users,” said Piyoosh Mukhija, Lead Project Engineer for the AIA system at Energid in a statement. “It enables the operators to quickly switch between different, powerful control modes that allow a mix of interactive and automated movements.”
“The inside of the tokamak is a vacuum and can reach temperatures of 120 degrees C,” said Eric Villedieu, the CEA IRFM Program Manager for the AIA Project, “and the walls can be much hotter. If the robot touches anything it risks serious injury.”
The software is the key to the robotic arm's guidance system, defining parameters for its movement.
“We’re seeing increasingly complex robots being used for increasingly complex tasks,” says Neil Tardella, CEO of Energid Technologies. “This is where Actin shines. And we are especially excited about this deployment in China, the world’s largest and fastest growing market for robotics.”