• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.508-516
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• 2010

An autonomous and automatic home mess-cleanup robot is newly developed in this paper. Thus far, vacuum-cleaners have lightened the burden of household chores but the operational labor that vacuum-cleaners entail has been very severe. Recently, a cleaning robot was commercialized to solve but it also was not successful because it still had the problem of mess-cleanup, which pertained to the clean-up of large trash and the arrangement of newspapers, clothes, etc. Hence, we develop a new home mess-cleanup robot (McBot) to completely overcome this problem. The robot needs the capability for agile navigation and a novel manipulation system for mess-cleanup. The autonomous navigational system has to be controlled for the full scanning of the living room and for the precise tracking of the desired path. It must be also be able to recognize the absolute position and orientation of itself and to distinguish the messed object that is to be cleaned up from obstacles that should merely be avoided. The manipulator, which is not needed in a vacuum-cleaning robot, has the functions of distinguishing the large trash that is to be cleaned from the messed objects that are to be arranged. It needs to use its discretion with regard to the form of the messed objects and to properly carry these objects to the destination. In particular, in this paper, we describe our approach for achieving accurate localization using RFID for home mess-cleanup robots. Finally, the effectiveness of the developed McBot is confirmed through live tests of the mess-cleanup task.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.121-126
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• 2018

The oral hygiene of patients admitted to the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) is very important. Critically ill patients are basically immunocompromised ones because of the high risk of infection by various pathogenic bacteria. The mouth is not only the primary site of infection, but also the site of systemic infections. The purpose of this study was to design a mouthpiece type vacuum oral cleaner for the oral care of seriously ill patients. A 3D CAD modeling and flow analysis model were established for a double structure type cleaner and standard tooth model, and their pressure and flow characteristics were analyzed. The pressure inside the oral cleaner was almost constant, but the velocity distribution showed a large difference between the inside and outside of the teeth. The velocity at the center region inside of the teeth was the highest, and the speed decreased as the distance from the center increased. In the analysis of the case where the suction tube was replaced by the drainage tube, the velocity at the center of the outer portion of the teeth was the highest. In order to increase the effectiveness of the oral cleaner, alternating between suction and drainage is proposed, and a design complement to increase the speed of the molar region is required.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.379-389
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• 2020

In this study, the flow and noise performances of high-speed fan motor unit for cordless vacuum cleaner is improved by optimizing the impeller which drives the suction air through flow passage of the cordless vacuum cleaner. Firstly, the unsteady incompressible Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are solved to investigate the flow through the fan motor unit using the computational fluid dynamics techniques. Based on flow field results, the Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings (FW-H) integral equation is used to predict flow noise radiated from the impeller. Predicted results are compared to the measured ones, which confirms the validity of the numerical method used. It is found that the strong vortex is formed around the mid-chord region of the main blades where the blade curvature change rapidly. Given that vortex acts as a loss for flow and a noise source for noise, impeller blade is redesigned to suppress the identified vortex. The response surface method using two factors is employed to determine the optimum inlet and outlet sweep angles for maximum flow rate and minimum noise. Further analysis of finally selected design confirms the improved flow and noise performance.