• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.70-75
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• 2021

We developed a platform that was capable of autonomous steering in a furrow environment. It was developed to autonomously control steering by recognizing the furrow using a laser distance, three-axis tilt, and temperature sensor. The performance evaluation indicated that the autonomous steering success rate was 99.17%, and it was possible to climb up to 5° on the slope. The usage time was approximately 40 h, and the maximum speed was 6.7 km/h.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.25-34
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• 2018

In this paper, we review the latest technical progress and commercialization of stretchable interconnectors, stretchable strain sensors, and stretchable substrates for stretchable electronics. The development of stretchable electronics can pave a way for new applications such as wearable devices, bio-integrated devices, healthcare and monitoring, and soft robotics. The essential components of stretchable electronic devices are stretchable interconnector and stretchable substrate. Stretchable interconnector should have high stretchability and high electrical conductivity as well as stability under severe mechanical deformation. Therefore several nanocomposite-based materials using CNT, graphene, nanowire, and metal flake have been developed. Geometric engineering such as wavy, serpentine, buckled and mesh structure has been well developed. Stretchable substrate should also pose high stretchability and compatibility with stretchable sensing or interconnecting material. We summarize the recent research results of new materials for stretchable interconnector and substrate as well as strain sensors. The Important challenges in development of the stretchable interconnector and substrate are also briefly discussed.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.25-34
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• 2020

Background: Gait analysis is an important measurement for health professionals to assess gait patterns related to functional limitations due to neurological or orthopedic conditions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability of the newly developed portable gait analysis system (PGAS). Design: Cross-sectional design. Test-retest study. Methods: The PGAS study was based on a wearable sensor, and measurement of gait kinematic parameters, such as gait velocity, cadence, step length and stride length, and joint angle (hip, knee, and ankle) in stance and swing phases. The results were compared with a motion capture system (MCS). Twenty healthy individuals were applied to the MCS and PGAS simultaneously during gait performance. Results: The test-retest reliability of the PGAS showed good repeatability in gait parameters with mean intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) ranging from 0.840 to 0.992, and joint angles in stance and swing phase from 0.907 to 0.988. The acceptable test-retest ICC was observed for the gait parameters (0.809 to 0.961), and joint angles (0.800 to 0.977). Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the developed PGAS showed good grades of repeatability for gait kinematic data along with acceptable ICCs compared with the results from the MCS. The gait kinematic parameters in healthy subjects can be used as standard values for adopting this PGAS.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.46 no.7
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• pp.464-470
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• 2008

Metallic nanostructures have great potential for bio-chemical sensor applications due to the excitation of localized surface plasmon and its sensitive response to environmental change. Unlike the commonly explored absorption-based sensing, the optical scattering provides single particle detection scheme. For the localized surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy, the metallic nanostructures with controlled shape and size have been usually fabricated on adhesion-layer pre-coated transparent glass substrates. In this study, we calculated the optical scattering properties of plasmonic Au nanodisc using a discrete dipole approximation method and analyzed the effect of adhesion layer on them. Our result also indicates that there is a trade-off between the surface plasmon damping and the capability of supporting nanostructures in determining the optimal thickness of adhesion layer. Marginal thickness of Ti adhesion layer for supporting Au nanostructures fabricated on a silica glass substrate was experimentally analyzed by an adhesion strength test using a nano-indentation technique.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2023

The smart fashion industry is showing steady growth worldwide, which will create new value throughout the fashion industry and become an essential element for efficient lifestyles. This study attempted to examine the development trend of smart fashion products from a design perspective and present the direction of design as a fashion item incorporating smart technology from a functional perspective. For this purpose, the category of portable smart fashion and the characteristics of the research object were considered through current status survey and previous research review. Among smart fashion, accessories and clothing/fabric products that have been released thus far that apply portable fashion design principles are selected and its characteristics are analyzed. In addition, function keywords were extracted based on the product description provided by the manufacturer and the function-oriented types were classified to identify each type's design characteristics. Therefore, the area receiving the signal and the sensor size should be considered, as should the fashion accessory type that combines various materials and colors. The clothing/textile type requires a design that mainly focuses on functions related to bio-signal interactions.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.195-210
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• 2020

The observed time series from the Korea Ocean Research Stations (KORS) in the Yellow and East China Seas (YECS) have various sources of noise, including bio-fouling on the underwater sensors, intermittent depletion of power, cable leakage, and interference between the sensors' signals. Besides these technical issues, intricate waves associated with background tidal currents tend to result in substantial oscillations in oceanic time series. Such technical and environmental issues require a regionally optimized automatic quality control (QC) procedure. Before the achievement of this ultimate goal, we examined the approach of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI)'s standard QC to investigate whether this procedure is pertinent to the KORS. The OOI QC consists of three categorized tests of global/local range of data, temporal variation including spike and gradient, and sensor-related issues associated with its stuck and drift. These OOI QC algorithms have been applied to the water temperature time series from the Ieodo station, one of the KORS. Obvious outliers are flagged successfully by the global/local range checks and the spike check. Both stuck and drift checks barely detected sensor-related errors, owing to frequent sensor cleaning and maintenance. The gradient check, however, fails to flag the remained outliers that tend to stick together closely, as well as often tend to mark probably good data as wrong data, especially data characterized by considerable fluctuations near the thermocline. These results suggest that the gradient check might not be relevant to observations involving considerable natural fluctuations as well as technical issues. Our study highlights the necessity of a new algorithm such as a standard deviation-based outlier check using multiple moving windows to replace the gradient check and an additional algorithm of an inter-consistency check with a related variable to build a standard QC procedure for the KORS.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.325-330
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• 2006

This study presents the characterization of an integrated portable microfluidic electrical detection system for fast and low volume immunoassay using polystyrene microbead, which are used as immobilization surfaces. In our chip, a filtration method using the microbead was adopted for sample immobilization and immunogold silver staining(IGSS) was used to increase the electrical signal. The chip is composed of an inexpensive and biocompatible Polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS) layer and Pyrex glass substrate. Platinum microelectrodes for electric signal detection were fabricated on the substrate and microchannel and pillar-type microfilters were formed in the PDMS layer. With a fabricated chip, we reacted antigen and antibody according to the procedures. Then, silver enhancer was injected to increase the size of nanogold particles tagged with the second antibody. As a result, microbeads were connected to each other and formed an electrical bridge between microelectrodes. Resistance measured through the electrodes showed a difference of two orders of magnitude between specific and nonspecific immuno-reactions. The detection limit was 10 ng/ml. The developed immunoassay chip reduced the total analysis time from 3 hours to 50 min. Fast and low-volume biochemical analysis has been successfully achieved with the developed microfilter and immuno-sensor chip, which is integrated to the microfluidic system.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.64-70
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• 2011

Portable artificial electronic nose (E-nose) system suffers from noisy fluctuation in surroundings such as temperature, vapor concentration, and gas flow, because its measuring condition is not controled precisely as in the laboratory. It is important to develop a simple and robust vapor recognition technique applicable to this uncontrolled measurement, especially for the portable measuring and diagnostic system which are expanding its area with the improvements in micro bio sensor technology. This study used a PDA-based portable E-nose to collect the uncontrolled vapor measurement signals, and applied the image matching algorithm developed in the previous study on the measured signal to verify its robustness and improved accuracy in portable vapor recognition. The results showed not only its consistent performance under noisy fluctuation in the portable measurement signal, but also an advanced recognition accuracy for 2 similar vapor species which have been hard to discriminate with the conventional maximum sensitivity feature extraction method. The proposed method can be easily applied to the data processing of the ubiquitous sensor network (USN) which are usually exposed to various operating conditions. Furthermore, it will greatly help to realize portable medical diagnostic and environment monitoring system with its robust performance and high accuracy.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.137-144
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• 2015

In this paper, we present an inertial sensor-based gait analysis system to measure and analyze lower-limb movements. We developed an integral AHRS(Attitude Heading Reference System) using a combination of rate gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer sensor signals. Several AHRS modules mounted on segments of the patient's body provide the quaternions representing the patient segments's orientation in space. And a method is also proposed for calculating three-dimensional inter-segment joint angle which is an important bio-mechanical measure for a variety of applications related to rehabilitation. To evaluate the performance of our AHRS module, the Vicon motion capture system, which offers millimeter resolution of 3D spatial displacements and orientations, is used as a reference. The evaluation resulted in a RMSE(Root Mean Square Error) of 1.08 and 1.72 degree in yaw and pitch angle. In order to evaluate the performance of our the gait analysis system, we compared the joint angle for the hip, knee and ankle with those provided by Vicon system. The result shows that our system will provide an in-depth insight into the effectiveness, appropriate level of care, and feedback of the rehabilitation process by performing real-time limb or gait analysis during the post-stroke recovery.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.309-315
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• 2009

Maintenance of adequate soil water content during the period of crop growth is necessary to support optimum plant growth and yields. A better understanding of soil water movement for precision irrigation would allow efficient supply of water to crops, thereby resulting in minimization of water drainage and contamination of ground water. This research reports on the characterization of spatial and temporal variations in water contents through three different textured soils, such as loam, sandy loam, and loamy sand, when water is applied on the soil surface using an one-line drip irrigation system and the soils are dried after the irrigation stops, respectively. Water contents through each soil profile were continuously monitored using three Sentek probes, each consisting of three capacitance sensors at 10, 20, and 30cm depths. Spatial variability in water content for each soil type was strongly influenced by soil textural class. There were big differences in wetting pattern and the rate of downward movement between loam and sandy loam soils, showing that the loam soil had a wider wetting pattern and a slower rate of downward movement than did the sandy loam soil. The wetting pattern in loamy sand soil was not apparent due to a low variability in water content (< 10%) by a lower-water holding capacity as compared to those measured in the loam and sandy loam soils, implying that the rate of water drainage below a depth of 30cm was high. When soils were dried, there were highly exponential relationships between water content and time elapsed after irrigation stops ($r^2$${\geq}$0.98). It was estimated that equilibrium moisture contents for loam, sandy loam, and loamy sand soils would be 17.6%, 6.2%, and 4.2%, respectively.