• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.519-524
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• 2009

This paper describes a new sensor system for 3D environment perception using stereo structured infrared light sources and a camera. Environment and obstacle sensing is the key issue for mobile robot localization and navigation. Laser scanners and infrared scanners cover $180^{\circ}$ and are accurate but too expensive. Those sensors use rotating light beams so that the range measurements are constrained on a plane. 3D measurements are much more useful in many ways for obstacle detection, map building and localization. Stereo vision is very common way of getting the depth information of 3D environment. However, it requires that the correspondence should be clearly identified and it also heavily depends on the light condition of the environment. Instead of using stereo camera, monocular camera and two projected infrared light sources are used in order to reduce the effects of the ambient light while getting 3D depth map. Modeling of the projected light pattern enabled precise estimation of the range. Two successive captures of the image with left and right infrared light projection provide several benefits, which include wider area of depth measurement, higher spatial resolution and the visibility perception.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.346-353
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• 2012

The Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) has great advantages as an analytical technique, namely real-time analysis without sample preparation, ideal for mobile chemical sensor for space exploration. The LIBS plasma characteristics are strongly dependent on the surrounding pressure. In this study, seven types of target (C, Ti, Ni, Cu, Sn, Al, Zn) were investigated for their elemental lifetime. The target was located in vacuum chamber which has the pressure range of 760 to $10^{-5}$ torr. As the pressure is decreased, the elemental lifetimes of carbon and titanium declined, while all other targets showed increased lifetimes until reaching 1 torr and declined with continued pressure decrease. The boiling point and electronegativity amongst the physicochemical properties of the samples are used to explain this peculiarity.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.8 no.4 s.23
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• pp.110-119
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• 2005

In this paper, a new detection algorithm was proposed for finding the position of lenslet array spot pattern used to acquire laser wavefront. Based on the analysis of the required signal processing characteristics, we categorized into and designed four main signal processing functions. The proposed was designed in order to have robust feature against a variation of geometrical form of the spot and also implemented to have semi-automatic thresholding capability based on CCD noise analysis. For performance evaluation, we made qualitative and quantitative comparisons with Carvalho's algorithm which has been published in recent. In the given experimental spot images, the proposed could detect the spots which has 1/3 times lower than the least S/N of which Carvalho's can detect and could reach to a detection precision of 0.1 pixel at the S/N. In functional aspect, the proposed could separate all valid spots locally. From these results, the proposed could have a superior precision of location detection of spot pattern in wider S/N range.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.214-220
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• 1997

A thin film optical waveguide sensor has been developed to measure and analyze quantitatively some inherent optical properties of biochemical substances. In this paper, two different kinds of thickness of thin film waveguide were prepared by RF sputtering of Corning-7059 glass(n = 1.588 at ${\lambda}=\;514nm$, Ar laser) on Pyrex glass substrates. We made a sensing membrane coated on the thin film waveguide with the poly(vinyl chloride-co-vinyl acetate-co-vinyl alcohol) (91 : 3 : 6) copolymer membrane based on $H^{+}$-selective chromoionophore and $K^{+}$-selective neutral ionophore and then proposed the thin film opptical waveguide ion sensor which can select a potassium ion. This sensor based ell the absorbance change by utilizing chromoionophore and neutral ionophore, which changes their absorption spectrum in the UV-vis region upon complexation of the corresponding ionic species, have been reported. The sensitivity dependence of the proposed sensor on interaction length, waveguide thickness, and content of a chromoionophore was investigated. This sensor has the measurement range of $10^{-6}M{\sim}1M$ for $K^{+}$ concentration and 90% response time of duration within 1 min. Also, our thin film optical waveguide sensor using the evanescent field was investigated as compared with conventional transmission sensor or optode sensor by the optical fiber. The sensitivity of thin-film waveguide $K^{+}$ sensor is higher than that of the conventional transmission sensor. The proposed sensor is expected to be useful to biochemical, medical, environmental inspection and so on.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.50-56
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• 1994

Fiber-optic biosensor for the detection of organophosphorus compounds in a contaminated water was developed, which was the component of pesticides and agricultural agent. The detection principle of designed sensor was the pH variance induced by a reaction of acetylcholinesterase enzyme inhibited by organophosphorus compounds. The pH variance was detected by the optical system to measure the organophosphorus compounds. Litmus was selected as the pH-sensitive dye suitable to the enzyme reaction and a light source to be detected by the optical system. The enzyme entrapped in Ca-alginate gel was immobilized at the inner wall to maintain the high activity of enzyme and to be reused for a long period. The optical fiber was used to miniaturize and control remotely the sensor system. The He-Ne laser with 632 nm was selected as the light source to prevent light intensity fluctuation by the product. Cheap plastic optical fibers were used as the transmission part of the light and the phototransistor was used as the reception part of light based on the wavelength of He-Ne laser. The proposed fiber-optic biosensor has the linear analytical range of 0 ppm-1.5 ppm with response time of 5 minutes.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1099-1104
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• 2003

In this paper, the position control of a car-like mobile robot using neural network is proposed. The positional information of the mobile robot is given by a laser range finder located remotely through wireless communication. The heading angle is measured by a gyro sensor. Considering these two sensor information as references, the robot posture by localization is corrected by a cascaded controller. In order to improve the tracking performance, a neural network with a cascaded controller is used to compensate for any uncertainty in the robot. The remotely located neural network filter modifies the reference trajectories to minimize the positional errors by wireless communication. A car-like mobile robot is built as a test-bed and experimental studies of proposed several control algorithms are performed. It turns out that the best position control can be achieved by a cascaded controller with neural network.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.933-934
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• 2006

High level perceptual tasks such as context understanding, SLAM and object recognition are essential for intelligent robot to provide services for human supports. Those intelligent robots often use camera sensor for vision information, sonar or laser sensor for range information, encoder for angular velocity of wheel and so on. The information is generated at different time intervals by the different H/W devices and S/W algorithms. The generation of high level information requires the specific mixture of low level information. And the information should be represented to be useful for robots to use in their ecological niche. In conventional robot systems, perceptual module requires the resource to use by tightly coupling whenever it is needed. So the resource and information cannot be easily shared and even could be invalid for the delayed information. In this paper, we propose a synchronization system of robot-centered information for context understanding. Our system represents information for the robot capacity and synchronizes the information that is asynchronously generated, where is employed the black-board architecture.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.361-368
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• 2015

This paper reports an unscented Kalman filter approach for localization of a mobile robot in an indoor environment. The method proposes a new model of measurement uncertainty which adjusts the error covariance according to the measured distance. The method also uses non-zero off diagonal values in error covariance matrices of motion uncertainty and measurement uncertainty. The method is tested through experiments in an indoor environment of 100*40 m working space using a differential drive robot which uses Laser range finder as an exteroceptive sensor. The results compare the localization performance of the proposed method with the conventional method which doesn't use adaptive measurement uncertainty model. Also, the experiment verifies the improvement due to non-zero off diagonal elements in covariance matrices. This paper contributes to implementing and evaluating a practical UKF approach for mobile robot localization.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.448-453
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• 2012

There are many researches to develop robots that improve its mobility to adapt in various uneven environments. In the paper, a hybrid wheeled and legged mobile robot is designed and a obstacle avoidance algorithm is proposed based on low power walking using LRF(Laser Range Finder). In order to stabilize the robot's motion and reduce energy consumption, we implement a low-power walking algorithm through comparison of the current value of each motors and correction of posture balance. A low-power obstacle avoidance algorithm is proposed by using LRF sensor. We improve walking stability by distributing power consumption and reduce energy consumption by selecting a shortest navigation path of the robot. The proposed methods are verified through walking and navigation experiments with the developed hybrid robot.