EAST-AIA deployment under vacuum: Calibration of laser diagnostic system using computer vision

Abstract

For the operation of EAST tokamak, it is crucial to ensure that all the diagnostic systems are in the good condition in order to reflect the plasma status properly. However, most of the diagnostic systems are mounted inside the tokamak vacuum vessel, which makes them extremely difficult to maintain under high vacuum condition during the tokamak operation. Thanks to a system called EAST articulated inspection arm robot (EAST-AIA), the examination of these in-vessel diagnostic systems can be performed by an embedded camera carried by the robot. In this paper, a computer vision algorithm has been developed to calibrate a laser diagnostic system with the help of a monocular camera at the robot end. In order to estimate the displacement of the laser diagnostic system with respect to the vacuum vessel, several visual markers were attached to the inner wall. This experiment was conducted both on the EAST vacuum vessel mock-up and the real EAST tokamak under vacuum condition. As a result, the accuracy of the displacement measurement was within 3mm under the current camera resolution, which satisfied the laser diagnostic system calibration.