A tokamak-agnostic control system for actuator management and integrated control with application to ITER and TCV

Integrated real-time control and robust event handling are critical for long-pulse and complex tokamaks like ITER. The plasma control system (PCS) has to deal with multiple control tasks and actuator sharing to fulfill the physics goals. A generic PCS architecture including a tokamak-agnostic layer and an interface one is proposed. The tokamak-agnostic layer is designed with a so-called task-based approach where a supervisor and actuator manager handle control tasks using generic controllers and actuator resources. This layer is linked to the tokamak by the interface layer. The task-based approach provides an abstraction layer for the operators as they only need to specify the control tasks from the pulse schedule regardless of the details of the relevant controllers. Standardized interfaces between controllers and actuator manager allow to reduce implementation errors, improve maintenance and development capabilities. The proposed scheme was applied to an ITER simulation with highly complex actuator system and conflicting control tasks. The same tokamak-agnostic layer was utilized in TCV experiments for NTM, central heating and β control tasks with TCV's EC H&CD system, providing a first experimental demonstration of the proposed approach.