• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.58-69
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• 2014

This paper proposes a method for predicting maximum friction coefficients and optimal slip ratios as optimal control parameters for traction control or slip control of autonomous mobile robots on rough terrain. This paper focuses on strength of ground surface which indicates different characteristics depending on material types on surface. Strength of various material types can be estimated by Willoughby sinkage model and by a developed testbed which can measure forces, velocities, and displacements generated by wheel-terrain interaction. Estimated strength is collaborated on building improved Brixius model with friction-slip data from experiments with the testbed over sand and grass material. Improved Brixius model covers widespread material types in outdoor environments on predicting friction-slip characteristics depending on strength of ground surface. Thus, a prediction model for obtaining optimal control parameters is derived by partial differentiation of the improved Brixius model with respect to slip. This prediction model can be applied to autonomous mobile robots and finally gives secure maneuverability on rough terrain. Proposed method is verified by various experiments under similar conditions with the ones for real outdoor robots.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.161.3-161
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• 2001

This paper describes design features of a cleaning robot for use in a radioactive zone of the Isolation room of the Irradiated Material Examination Facility (IMEF) at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). This cleaning robot is intended to completely eliminate human interaction with hazardous radioactive contaminants. The clean ing robot that is operated either by manual mode or by autonomous mode is designed to be capable of cleaning the isolation room´s floor surface and collecting dry nuclear fuel debris and other radioactive waste placed on the floor. The functional, mechanical and electrical design considerations of the cleaning robot in terms of remote cleanup operation and remote maintenance at a radioactive environment are presented. A graphical representation of the cleaning ...

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.67-76
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• 2005

In this paper, An analysis on the intelligence system for a biped walking robot(BWR) was made and its results were applied to the BWR. Various sensors were applied to the developed BWR for autonomous and intelligent walk in unknown environments. To measure the distance between the object and BWR, ultrasonic sensor and infrared-rays sensor were used. To identity surrounding environments, vision system was used. Gyro sensor was used to control the posture of BWR. Also, piezoelectricity sensor was used to identity the pressure of foot landing on the surface. Sensors applied to the robot have measurement errors according to noises or walking environments. To improve the function of these sensors, influences of noise or sensing errors were minimized using a sensor fusion scheme. A gait test using the sensor fusion system was performed, and its results are presented.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.339-348
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• 2010

One of the requirements for autonomous vehicles on off-road is to move stably in unstructured environments. Such capacity of autonomous vehicles is one of the most important abilities in consideration of mobility. So, many researchers use contact and/or non-contact methods to determine a terrain whether the vehicle can move on or not. In this paper we introduce an algorithm to classify terrains using visual information(one of the non-contacting methods). As a pre-processing, a contrast enhancement technique is introduced to improve classification of terrain. Also, for conducting classification algorithm, training images are grouped according to materials of the surface, and then Bayesian classification are applied to new images to determine membership to each group. In addition to the classification, we can build Traversability map specified by friction coefficients on which autonomous vehicles can decide to go or not. Experiments are made with Load-Cell to determine real friction coefficients of various terrains.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.41-49
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• 2022

With the advancement of intelligent vehicles and unmanned systems, there is a growing interest in underwater surveys using autonomous marine vehicles (AMVs). This study presents an automated planning strategy for a long-term survey mission using a fleet of AMVs consisting of autonomous surface vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles. Due to the complex nature of the mission, the actions of the vehicle must be of high-level abstraction, which means that the actions indicate not only motion of the vehicle but also symbols and semantics, such as those corresponding to deploy, charge, and survey. For automated planning, the planning domain definition language (PDDL) was employed to construct a mission planner for realizing a powerful and flexible planning system. Despite being able to handle abstract actions, such high-level planners have difficulty in efficiently optimizing numerical objectives such as obtaining the shortest route given multiple destinations. To alleviate this issue, a widely known technique in operations research was additionally employed, which limited the solution space so that the high-level planner could devise efficient plans. For a comprehensive evaluation of the proposed method, various PDDL-based planners with different parameter settings were implemented, and their performances were compared through simulation. The simulation result shows that the proposed method outperformed the baseline solutions by yielding plans that completed the missions more quickly, thereby demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed methodology.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2014

This paper introduces a robot platform which can do weeding while traveling between rice seedlings stably against irregular land surface of a paddy field. Also, an autonomous navigation technique that can track on stable state without any damage of the seedlings in the working area is proposed. Detection of the rice seedlings and avoidance knocking down by the robot platform is achieved by the sensor fusion of a laser range finder (LRF) and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). These sensors are also used to control navigating direction of the robot to keep going along the column of rice seedling consistently. Deviation of the robot direction from the rice column that is sensed by the LRF is fed back to a proportional and derivative controller to obtain stable adjustment of navigating direction and get proper returning speed of the robot to the rice column.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.295-301
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• 2017

Recently, autonomous navigation technology, obstacle recognition, and obstacle collision avoidance technology are actively being developed for an unmanned surface vehicle (USV). The path to move from the current location to the destination should be planned, in order for an USV to autonomously operate safely to its destination. The dynamic window approach (DWA) is a well-known navigation scheme as a local path planning. The DWA algorithm derives the linear velocity and angular velocity by evaluating the destination direction, velocity, and distance from the obstacle. However, because DWA algorithm does not consider tracking the path, when using only the DWA algorithm, the ship may navigate away from the path line after avoiding obstacles. In this paper, we propose an improved DWA algorithm that can follow path line. And we implemented the simulation and compared the existing DWA algorithm with the improved DWA algorithm proposed in this paper. As a result, it is confirmed that the proposed DWA algorithm follows the path line better.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.277-285
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• 2010

This paper describes an approach to analyze geometrical information of building images for understanding outdoor environment of autonomous navigation robot. Line segments and color information are used to classily a building with the other objects such as sky, trees, and roads. The line segments and their two neighboring regions are extracted from detected edges in image. The model of line segment (MLS) consists of color information of neighbor regions. This model rules out the line segments of non-building face. A building face converges into dominant vanishing points (DVPs) which include one vertical point and one of five horizontal points in maximum. The intersection of vertical and horizontal lines creates a facet of building. The geometrical characteristics such as the center coordinates, area, aspect ratio and aligned coexistence are used for extracting the windows in the building facet. In experiments, 150 building faces and 1607 windows were detected from the database of outdoor environment. We found that this result shows 94.46% detection rate. These experimental images were all taken in Ulsan metropolitan city in Korea under difference of viewpoints, daytime, camera system and weather condition.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.51-57
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• 2013

Recently, the number of jellyfish has been rapidly grown because of the global warming, the increase of marine structures, pollution, and etc. The increased jellyfish is a threat to the marine ecosystem and induces a huge damage to fishery industries, seaside power plants, and beach industries. To overcome this problem, a manual jellyfish dissecting device and pump system for jellyfish removal have been developed by researchers. However, the systems need too many human operators and their benefit to cost is not so good. Thus, in this paper, the design, implementation, and experiments of autonomous jellyfish removal robot system, named JEROS, have been presented. The JEROS consists of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV), a device for jellyfish removal, an electrical control system, an autonomous navigation system, and a vision-based jellyfish detection system. The USV was designed as a twin hull-type ship, and a jellyfish removal device consists of a net for gathering jellyfish and a blades-equipped propeller for dissecting jellyfish. The autonomous navigation system starts by generating an efficient path for jellyfish removal when the location of jellyfish is received from a remote server or recognized by a vision system. The location of JEROS is estimated by IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) and GPS, and jellyfish is eliminated while tracking the path. The performance of the vision-based jellyfish recognition, navigation, and jellyfish removal was demonstrated through field tests in the Masan and Jindong harbors in the southern coast of Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.29-35
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• 2022

When a vehicle is driven off a road surface, the deformations of the road surface and tire are combined. Consequently, the dynamic behavior of wheel movement becomes difficult to predict and control. Herein, we propose a tire test bed to capture the dynamic behavior of tires moving on sand and soil. Based on this study, it is discovered that the slip rate can be controlled, and the vertical force can be measured using a load cell. The test results show that this test bed can be useful for capturing the dynamic behavior of the tire and validating dynamic simulations. In fact, the tire test bed developed in this study can be used to verify the results of computer simulations. In addition, it can be used for basic experiments pertaining to the speed control of unmanned autonomous vehicles.