Development of a plasma control system for steady-state operation on QUEST

A drift error correction technique with machine vision and a real-time equilibrium calculation code have been developed on the QUEST (Q-shu university experiment with the steady-state spherical tokamak) for steady-state operation. The drift error caused by the long time-integration of magnetic raw signals has to be removed. With a captured image of the plasma’s cross section, the plasma’s position is identified by use of image filters. The measured magnetic flux values are corrected to the calculated flux values estimated by using this plasma position. The correction with the captured image work as expected in the preliminary result using a flashlight instead of a plasma.