Revolution at SOLEIL: review and prospect for motion control

At any synchrotron facility, motors are numerous: they are the significant actuators of accelerators and the main actuators of beamlines. Since 2003, the Electronic Control and data Acquisition group at SOLEIL has defined a modular and reliable motion architecture integrating industrial products (Galil controller, Midi-Engineering and Phytron power boards). Simultaneously, the software control group has developed a set of dedicated Tango devices. At present, more than 1000 motors and 200 motion controller crates are in operation at SOLEIL. Aware that motion control is important in improving performance, given that the positioning of optical systems and samples is a key element of any beamline, SOLEIL wants to upgrade its motion controller in order to maintain the facility at a high performance level and be able to respond to new requirements: better accuracy, complex trajectory and coupling multi-axis devices such as hexa-pods. This project is called REVOLUTION (Reconsider Various controllers for your motion). (authors)