• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.176-189
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• 2024

Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) is a core feature of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are commonly referred to as drones. In emerging smart logistics, drones are expected to play an increasingly important role as mobile platforms. Therefore, research on last-mile delivery using drones is on the rise. There is a growing trend toward providing drone delivery services, particularly among retailers that handle small and lightweight items. However, there is still a lack of research on a structural definition of the VTOL drone flight model for multi-point delivery service. This paper describes a VTOL drone flight route structure for a multi-drone delivery service using rotary-wing type VTOL drones. First, we briefly explore the factors to be considered when providing drone delivery services. Second, a VTOL drone flight route model is introduced using the idea of the nested graph. Based on the proposed model, we describe various time-related attributes for delivery services using drones and present corresponding calculation methods. Additionally, as an application of the drone route model and the time attributes, we comprehensively describe a simple example of the multi-drone delivery for first-come-first-served (FCFS) services.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.13-18
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• 2018

Drones are controlled by the remote pilot from the ground stations using the radio control or autonomously following the pre-programmed flight plans. In this paper, we develop a method and an optimal path search system for providing 3D augmented reality flight (ARF) images for safe and efficient flight control of drones. The developed system consisted of the drone, the ground station and user terminals, and the optimal path search server. We use the Dijkstra algorithm to find the optimal path considering the drone information, flight information, environmental information, and flight mission. We generate a 3D augmented reality flight (ARF) image overlaid with the path information as well as the drone information and the flight information on the flight image received from the drone. The ARF image for adjusting the drone is generated by overlaying route information, drone information, flight information, and the like on the image captured by the drone.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.775-784
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• 2023

Drone images are being used more and more actively in the fields of surveying and spatial information, and are rapidly replacing existing aerial and satellite images. The technology of quickly acquiring real-time data at low cost and processing it is now being applied to actual industries beyond research. However, there are also problems encountered as this progresses. When high-resolution spatial information is acquired using a general 2D flight plan for a terrain with sever undulations, problems arise due to the difference in resolution of the data. In particular, when a low-altitude high-resolution image is taken using a drone in a mountainous or steep terrain, there may be a problem in image matching due to a resolution difference caused by terrain undulations. This problem occurs because a drone acquires data while flying on a 2D plane at a fixed altitude, just like conventional aerial photography. In order to acquire high-quality 3D data using a drone, the scale difference for the shooting distance should be considered. In addition, in order to obtain facade images of large structures, it is necessary to take images in 3D space. In this study, in order to improve the disadvantages of the 2D flight method, a 3D flight plan was established for the study area, and it was confirmed that high-quality 3D spatial information could be obtained in this way.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.53-64
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to find out the fast delivery route that several drones return a truck again after departing from it for delivery locations at each cluster while the truck goes through the cluster composed of several delivery locations. The main issue is to reduce the total delivery time composed of the delivery time by relatively slow trucks via clusters and the sum of maximum delivery times by relatively fast drones in each cluster. To solve this problem, we use a three-step heuristic approach. First, we cluster the nearby delivery locations with minimal number of clusters satisfying a constraint of drone flight distance to set delivery paths for drones in each cluster. Second, we set an optimal delivery route for a truck through centers of the clusters using the TSP model. Finally, we find out the moved centers of clusters while maintaining the delivery paths for the truck and drones and satisfying the constraint of drone flight. distance in the two-dimensional region to reduce the total delivery time. In order to analyze the effect of this study model according to the change of the number of delivery locations, we developed a R-based simulation prototype and compared the relative efficiency, and performed paired t-test between TSP model and the cluster-based models. This study showed its excellence through this experimentation.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.1346-1357
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• 2021

The drone technology, which is receiving a lot of attention due to the 4th industrial revolution, requires an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles'(UAVs) flight path search algorithm for automatic operation and driver assistance. Various studies related to flight path prediction and recommendation algorithms are being actively conducted, and many studies using the A-Star algorithm are typically performed. In this paper, we propose an Optimal 3D Flight Path Recommendation System for unmanned aerial vehicles. The proposed system was implemented and simulated in Unity 3D, and by indicating the meaning of the route using three different colors, such as planned route, the recommended route, and the current route were compared each other. And obstacle response experiments were conducted to cope with bad weather. It is expected that the proposed system will provide an improved user experience compared to the existing system through accurate and real-time adaptive path prediction in a 3D mixed reality environment.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.67 no.8
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• pp.1080-1088
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• 2018

General methods of controlling a drone are divided into manual control and automatic control, which means a drone moves along the route. In case of manual control, a man should be able to figure out the location and status of a drone and have a controller to control it remotely. When people control a drone, they collect information about the location and position of a drone with the eyes and have its internal information such as the battery voltage and atmospheric pressure delivered through telemetry. They make a decision about the movement of a drone based on the gathered information and control it with a radio device. The automatic control method of a drone finding its route itself is not much different from manual control by man. The information about the position of a drone is collected with the gyro and accelerator sensor, and the internal information is delivered to the CPU digitally. The location information of a drone is collected with GPS, atmospheric pressure sensors, camera sensors, and ultrasound sensors. This paper presents an investigation into drone control by a remote computer. Instead of using the automatic control function of a drone, this approach involves a computer observing a drone, determining its movement based on the observation results, and controlling it with a radio device. The computer with a Depth camera collects information, makes a decision, and controls a drone in a similar way to human beings, which makes it applicable to various fields. Its usability is enhanced further since it can control common commercial drones instead of specially manufactured drones for swarm flight. It can also be used to prevent drones clashing each other, control access to a drone, and control drones with no permit.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.393-418
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• 2023

Drones are increasingly used in logistics delivery due to their low cost, high-speed and straight-line flight. Considering the small cargo capacity, limited endurance and other factors, this paper optimized the pickup and delivery vehicle routing problem with time windows in the mode of "truck+drone". A mixed integer programming model with the objective of minimizing transportation cost was proposed and an improved adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm is designed to solve the problem. In this algorithm, the performance of the algorithm is improved by designing various efficient destroy operators and repair operators based on the characteristics of the model and introducing a simulated annealing strategy to avoid falling into local optimum solutions. The effectiveness of the model and the algorithm is verified through the numerical experiments, and the impact of the "truck+drone" on the route cost is analyzed, the result of this study provides a decision basis for the route planning of "truck+drone" mode delivery.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.237-246
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• 2022

Among the technologies of the 4th industrial revolution, drones that have grown rapidly and are being used in various industries can be operated by the pilot directly or can be operated automatically through programming. In order to be controlled by a pilot or to operate automatically, it is essential to predict and analyze the optimal path for the drone to move without obstacles. In this paper, after securing and analyzing the pilot training dataset through the unmanned aerial vehicle piloting training platform designed through prior research, the profile of the dataset that should be preceded to search and derive the optimal route of the unmanned aerial vehicle was designed. The drone pilot training data includes the speed, movement distance, and angle of the drone, and the data set is visualized to unify the properties showing the same pattern into one and preprocess the properties showing the outliers. It is expected that the proposed big data-based profile can be used to predict and analyze the optimal movement path of an unmanned aerial vehicle.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2022

With the recent increase in the development of military drones, they are adopted and used as the combat system of battalion level or higher. However, it is difficult to use drones that can be used in battles below the platoon level due to the current conditions for the formation of units in the Korean military. In this paper, therefore, we developed a program drones equipped with a thermal imaging camera and LiDAR sensor for reconnaissance and exploration that can be applied in battles below the platoon level. Using these drones, we studied the possibility and feasibility of drones for small-scale combats that can find hidden enemies, search for an appropriate detour through image processing and conduct reconnaissance and search for battlefields, hiding and cover-up through image processing. In addition to the purpose of using the proposed drone to search for an enemies lying in ambush in the battlefield, it can be used as a function to check the optimal movement path when a combat unit is moving, or as a function to check the optimal place for cover-up or hiding. In particular, it is possible to check another route other than the route recommended by the program because the features of the terrain can be checked from various viewpoints through 3D modeling. We verified the possiblity of flying by designing and assembling in a form of adding LiDAR and thermal imaging camera module to a drone assembled based on racing drone parts, which are open source hardware, and developed autonomous flight and search functions which can be used even by non-professional drone operators based on open source software, and then installed them to verify their feasibility.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.1007-1021
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• 2022

Autonomous driving of unmanned aerial vehicles may have to pay expensive cost to create and switch new routes if unexpected obstacles exist or local map updates occured by the control system due to incorrect route information. Integrating digital twins into the path-following process requires more computing resources to quickly switch the wrong path to an alternative path, but it can quickly update the path during flight. In this study, we design a DEVS-based simulation environment which can modify optimized paths through short-term simulation of multi-virtual UAVs for applying digital twin concepts to path follow. Through simulation, we confirmed the possibility of increasing the mission stability of UAV.