• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.41-46
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• 2006

Ubiquitous location based services, offer helpful services anytime and anywhere by using real-time location information of objects based on ubiquitous network. Particularly, autonomous mobile robots can be a solution for various applications related to ubiquitous location based services, e.g. in hospitals, for cleaning, at airports or railway stations. However, a meaningful and still unsolved problem for most applications is to develop a robust and cheap positioning system. A typical example of position measurements is dead reckoning that is well known for providing a good short-term accuracy, being inexpensive and allowing very high sampling rates. However, the measurement always has some accumulated errors because the fundamental idea of dead reckoning is the integration of incremental motion information over time. The other hand, a localization system using RFID offers absolute position of robots regardless of elapsed time. We construct an absolute positioning system based on RFID and investigate how localization technique can be enhanced by RFID through experiment to measure the location of a mobile robot. Tags are placed on the floor at 5cm intervals in the shape of square in an arbitrary space and the accuracy of position measurement is investigated . To reduce the error and the variation of error, a weighting function based on Gaussian function is used. Different weighting values are applied to position data of tags since weighting values follow Gaussian function.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.85-92
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• 2003

In this paper, we propose a method to evaluate performances of mobile personal robots. A set of performance measures is proposed and the corresponding evaluation methods are developed. Different from industrial manipulators, personal robots need to be evaluated with its mobility, navigation, task and intelligent performance in environments where human beings exist. The proposed performance measures are composed of measures for mobility including vibration, repeatability, path accuracy and so on, as well as measures for navigation performance including wall following, overcoming doorsill, obstacle avoidance and localization. But task and intelligent behavior performances such as cleaning capability and high-level decision-making are not considered in this paper. To measure the proposed performances through a series of tests, we designed a test environment and developed measurement systems including a 3D Laser tracking system, a vision monitoring system and a vibration measurement system. We measured the proposed performances with a mobile robot to show the result as an example. The developed systems, which are installed at Korea Agency for Technology and Standards, are going to be used for many robot companies in Korea.

• Archives of design research
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• v.18 no.2 s.60
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• pp.155-164
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• 2005

Home-service robots need to have sufficient spatial information about the surroundings for interacting with human intelligently and performing services efficiently. It is very important to investigate the efficient interaction style that supports map building task through human-robot collaboration. We first analyzed map building task with a cleaning robot and drew 4 design factors and tentative solutions, including map building procedure (task-preferred procedure/space- preferred procedure), LCD display installation (robot/robot+remote control), navigation method (push type/pull type), feedback modality(GUI/GUI+TTS). The design factors and tentative solutions were defined as independent variables and levels. This research investigated how those variables affect to the human task performance and behavior in map building tast. 8 kinds of experiment prototypes were built and usability test among 16 house wives was conducted for acquiring empirical data. As the experiment result, in terms of map building procedure, space-preferred procedure indicated better task performance than task-proffered procedure as we expected. For the LCD display installation factor, remote control with LCD display indicated higher task performance and subjective satisfaction. In robot navigation method, it was very difficult to find a significant difference between push type and pull type which contrary to our expectation. In fact, push type indicated higher subjective satisfaction. Also in feedback modality, we have acquired negative feedback an additional TTS operation guidance. It seems that robot's autonomy before achieving spatial information is rudiment condition which means users are just interacting with a mobile appliance. Thus they prefer remote-control-based interaction style in robot map building process as they used in traditional appliance control.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.640-655
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• 2019

Technology status was investigated by analyzing patents and development cases of wearable robots. Development direction of wearable robot for wearability was also suggested by understanding the problems of wearability from development cases through the FGI technique. The number of patents per technical field was the most in the field of strength support, but AI in the technology field was different in each country; Korea was found to be poor in the category of daily living assistance. The number of patents by technology category was the most in the category of muscular strength assistance. However, the values of AI in the technology category were different in each country; Korea was found to be poor in the category of daily living assistance. Development cases were focused on rehabilitation, so development is not fulfilled uniformly by use purpose. By wearing body parts, robots with single function type were mainly developed. Rigid material robots were mainly developed. It was confirmed that wearable robot technology is not developed evenly in the category of application because it is in the early stage of the technical proposal and centered on main performance improvement. We derived twelve wearable conditions for wearable robots: Shape and Size Appropriateness, Movement Appropriateness, Composition Appropriateness, Physiological Appropriateness, Performance Satisfaction, Ease of Operation, Safety, Durability, Ease of Dressing, Ease of Cleaning, Portability and Ease of Storage and Appearance Satisfaction. Finally, the development direction of a wearable robot for each wearable condition was suggested.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.41 no.7
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• pp.655-663
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• 2017

With the development of ICT technology, the indoor utilization of robots is increasing. Research on transportation, cleaning, guidance robots, etc., that can be used now or increase the scope of future use will be advanced. To facilitate the use of mobile robots in indoor spaces, the problem of self-location recognition is an important research area to be addressed. If an unexpected collision occurs during the motion of a mobile robot, the position of the mobile robot deviates from the initially planned navigation path. In this case, the mobile robot needs a robust controller that enables the mobile robot to accurately navigate toward the goal. This research tries to address the issues related to self-location of the mobile robot. A robust position recognition system was implemented; the system estimates the position of the mobile robot using a combination of encoder information of the mobile robot and the absolute space coordinate transformation information obtained from external video sources such as a large number of CCTVs installed in the room. Furthermore, vector field histogram method of the pass traveling algorithm of the mobile robot system was applied, and the results of the research were confirmed after conducting experiments.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1824-1832
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• 2011

In this paper, a smart home service robot McBot II is newly developed in much more practical and intelligent system than McBot I which we had developed a few years ago. 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 II to completely overcome this problem on real environments. The mechanical design and the basic control of McBot II, which performs mess-cleanup function etc. in house, is actually focused in this paper. McBot II is mechanically modeled in the same method that the human works in door by using the waist and the hands. The big-ranged vertical lift and the shoulder joints to be able to forward move are mechanically designed for the operating function as the human's waist when the robot works. The mobility of McBot II is designed in the holonomic mobile robot for the collision avoidance of obstacle and the high speed navigation on the small area in door. Finally, good performance of McBot II, which has been optimally desinged, is confirmed through the experimental results for the control of the robotic body, mobility, arms and hands in this paper.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.318-325
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• 2019

Recently, research and development on agricultural robots have been on the rise as the interest in smart farming has increased. Robots used in smart greenhouses should be taken into account with the working characteristics and growing environment. This study examined cleaning robots developed through the environmental analysis of smart greenhouses. This study assessed the evaluation method considering the requirements of the pest control robot applicable to the smart greenhouse. The performance and quality assessment criteria were established to conduct tests through the requirements of robots. The required functions and goals of the pest control robot were derived by referring to the robot-related standards. A driving and working ability test was conducted to assess the performance of the robot. The driving test was conducted on the driving performance of the robot and the work capability was tested on the pest control performance. In addition, a durability test was conducted to assess the quality of the robot. The required factors for smart greenhouse robots were derived from the test results. The study results are expected be a standard for an evaluation of a variety of robots for applications to smart greenhouses.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.259-260
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• 2007

본 논문은 건물 외면의 유리창 청소로봇에 관한 것으로, 더욱 세부적으로는 청소 시스템을 갖춘 로봇을 사람이 닦기 힘들거나 위험한 고층건물이나 아파트 둥의 실외 유리창에 흡착시켜 청소로봇을 이용하여 실외 유리창을 자동으로 닦을 수 있게 하는 건물 외면의 유리창 청소로봇에 관한 것이다. 진공펌프를 사용하여 유리창에 안정적으로 흡착할 수 있도록 하였고, 블루투스를 이용하여 무선 조종이 가능하도록 하여 사용자가 원거리에서 로봇의 청소를 제어할 수 있도록 하였다.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.737-742
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• 2009

The popularity of autonomous mobile robots have been rapidly increasing due to their new emerging application area, from room cleaning, tourist guidance to space explorations. However, the development of a satisfactory control algorithm that will enable the autonomous mobile robots to navigate safely especially in dynamic environments is still an open research problem. In this paper, a newly proposed potential field based control method is implemented, analyzed, and improvements are suggest based on experimental results obtain from computer simulations. The experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of the behavior-based control using the proposed potential field generation technique.

• 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.