Advances in real-time plasma boundary reconstruction: from gaps to snakes

The problem of plasma boundary reconstruction in relation to shape control was discussed. The different approaches to guaranteeing accuracy and robustness of plasma boundary control were presented. Deformable models provide a new formulation of the plasma boundary as a continuous contour, which facilitates more accurate estimation of global shape parameters, able to describe the plasma evolution in a realistic way. The results and analyses performed on JET and ITER support the validity of snake reconstruction methodology.