• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.888-891
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• 2005

In this paper, the prototype of a walking guide robot with tactile display is introduced, and the psychophysical experiment of the tactile recognition for a tactile display is carried out and analyzed. The objective of this research is the development of a walking guide robot for the blind to walk safely. A walking guide robot consists of a guide vehicle and a tactile display device. A guide vehicle, located in the front of the walking blind, detects the obstacle using ultrasonic sensors and offers the information of position and walking direction acquired from GPS module to the walking blind by voice. The tactile display device, located in the handle which is connected with the guide vehicle by cane, offers the processed obstacle information such as position, size, moving, shape of obstacle and safe path, etc. The psychophysical experiments for the threshold of perception and recognition ability of tactile stimulation are carried out by the estimation of the subject group. As a result the appropriate tactile stimulus intensity and frequency to recognize tactile stimulation effectively are discussed and derived.

• 한국HCI학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.02a
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• pp.534-539
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• 2008

This paper is about intelligent hexapod robot for the support walking of the aged person. The robot using various sensors and small camera has various abilities of forward backward walking, turing left or right, control the speed of walking, avoiding the obstacles and detecting risky situation of fire or gas. To let the aged feel soft and safe walking, we used special servo motor and developed hexapod walking mechanism and effective algorithm.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.783-789
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• 2007

In this paper, firstly, we propose a generating method of the 3-D obstacle map using ultrasonic sensors. Secondly, we try to find the necessary stimulation conditions of compact tactile display device for effective transfer of obstacle information. The final goal of this research is the development of a walking guide system for the blind to walk safely. The walking guide system consists of a guide vehicle for the obstacle detection and a tactile display device for the transfer of the obstacle information. The guide vehicle, located in front of the walking blind, detects the obstacle using ultrasonic sensors. The processed information makes an obstacle map and transmits safe path and emergency situation to the blind by the tactile display. The tactile display device, located in the handle which is connected with the guide vehicle by cane, offers the processed obstacle information such as position, size, moving, shape of obstacle and safe path, etc. The concept of a walking guide system with tactile display is introduced, and experiments of 3-D obstacle detection and tactile perception are carried out and analyzed.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.155-162
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• 2009

In walking guide robot, a guide vehicle detects an obstacle distribution in the walking space using range sensors, and generates a 3D grid map to map the obstacle information and the tactile display. And the obstacle information is transferred to a blind pedestrian using tactile feedback. Based on the obstacle information a user plans a walking route and controls the guide vehicle. The algorithm for 3D detection of an obstacle distribution and the method of mapping the generated obstacle map and the tactile display device are proposed in this paper. The experiment for the 3D detection of an obstacle distribution using ultrasonic sensors is performed and estimated. The experimental system consisted of ultrasonic sensors and control system. In the experiment, the detection of fixed obstacles on the ground, the moving obstacle, and the detection of down-step are performed. The performance for the 3D detection of an obstacle distribution and space mapping is verified through the experiment.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.37C no.10
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• pp.925-932
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• 2012

In this paper, we develop a pattern recognition algorithm applied to a humanoid robot which is exploited as a guide for visually handicapped persons to find a desired path to their destinations. Behavior primitives of a humanoid robot are defined, and Canny's edge detection algorithm is employed to extract the pattern and color of the paving blocks that especially devised for visually handicapped persons. Based on these, an efficient path finding algorithm is developed and implemented on a humanoid robot, running on an embedded linux operating system equipped with a video camera. The performance of our algorithm is experimentally examined in terms of the response time and the pattern recognition ratio. In order to validate our algorithm in various realistic environments, the experiments are repeatedly performed by changing the tilt of paving blocks and the brightness in surrounding area. The results show that our algorithm performs sufficiently well to be exploited as a path finding system for visually handicapped persons.