• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.344-349
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• 2017

Wall-climbing robots have been developed for various purposes, such as cleaning skyscraper windows, maintaining large structures, and welding vessels. Conventional wall-climbing robots use movement systems based on wheels or legs. However, wheeled robots suffer from slipping effects, while legged systems require many actuators and control systems for the complex linkage structure, which also increases the weight of the robot. To overcome these disadvantages, we propose a new wall-climbing robot that walks based on gorilla locomotion. The proposed robot consists of a DC drive motor, a vacuum pump for adsorption, and a micro controller for controlling the system. The performance of the robot was experimentally verified on vertical and horizontal flat surfaces. The robot could be used for various functions in industrial sites or disaster areas.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1193-1200
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• 2015

An effective swing trajectory of legged robots is different from the swing trajectories of humans or animals because of different dynamic characteristics. Therefore, it is important to find optimal parameters through experiments. This paper proposes a real-time nonlinear programming (RTNLP) method for optimization of the swing trajectory of the legged robot. For parameterization of the trajectory, the swing trajectory is approximated to parabolic and cubic spline curves. The robotic leg is position-controlled by a high-gain controller, and a cost function is selected such that the sum of the motor inputs and tracking errors at each joint is minimized. A simplified dynamic model is used to simulate the dynamics of a robotic leg. The purpose of the simulation is to find the feasibility of the optimization problem before an actual experiment occurs. Finally, an experiment is carried out on a real robotic leg with two degrees of freedom. For both the simulation and the experiment, the design variables converge to a feasible point, reducing the cost value.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.278-284
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• 2019

Legged locomotion has high mobility on irregular surfaces by touching the ground at discrete points. Inspired by the creature's legged locomotion, legged robots have been developed to explore unstructured environments. In this paper, we propose a modular crawler that can easily adjust the number of legs for adapting the environment that the robot should move. One module has a pair of legs, so the number of legs can be adjusted by changing the number of modules. All legs are driven by a single driving motor for simple and compact design, so the driving axle of each module is connected by the universal joint. Universal joints between modules enable the body flexion for steering or overcoming higher obstacles. A prototype of crawler with three modules is built and the driving performance and the effect of module lifting on the ability to overcome obstacles are demonstrated by the experiments.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.500-507
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• 2022

In this study, a motion planning method based on the integer representation of contact status between wheels and the ground is proposed for planning swing motion of a 6×6 wheel-legged robot to cross large obstacles and gaps. Wheel-legged robots can drive on a flat road by wheels and overcome large obstacles by legs. Autonomously crossing large obstacles requires the robot to perform complex motion planning of multi-contacts and wheel-rolling at the same time. The lift-off and touch-down status of wheels and the trajectories of legs should be carefully planned to avoid collision between the robot body and the obstacle. To address this issue, we propose a planning method for swing motion of robot legs. It combines an integer representation of discrete contact status and a trajectory optimization based on the direct collocation method, which results in a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem. The planned motion is used to control the joint angles of the articulated legs. The proposed method is verified by the MuJoCo simulation and shows that over 95% and 83% success rate when the height of vertical obstacles and the length of gaps are equal to or less than 1.68 times of the wheel radius and 1.44 times of the wheel diameter, respectively.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.201-207
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• 2012

Jumping is considered as a suitable way for realizing fast locomotion on the ground. As for the issue of developing mobile robots that can jump up and forward enough for accomplishing useful missions, this paper first introduces two types of jumping principles that are found in biological animals or insects. We also present how the principles are applied to several jumping robot examples that include outcomes for the past a few years and also our recent one. Design ideas and features of the robots are explained and compared in order to discuss important issues and guidelines for the design of jumping robots.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.169-175
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• 2016

There are many researches to develop robots that improve its mobility and task planning to adapt in various uneven environments. In this paper, we propose the design method and task planning of quadruped robot which can have top-bottom docking structure. The proposed quadruped robot is designed to adjust leg length using linear actuators and perform top-bottom docking and undocking using octagonal cone shaped docking module. Also, to stable walking and information gathering in the various environments, a geomagnetic sensor, PSD sensor, LRF sensor and camera. We propose an obstacle avoidance method and the topbottom docking algorithm of the two quadruped robots using linear actuator. The robot can overcome obstacles using adjusting leg length and activate the top-bottom docking function. The top-bottom docking robots of two quadruped robot can walk 4 legged walking and 6 legged walking, and use 4 arms or 2 arms the upper. We verified that the docking robots can carry objects using 4 leg of the upper robot.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.227-234
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• 2011

The Interest in robotics has been steadily increasing in recent times both in Korea as well as abroad. Research on robots for new and diverse fields is ongoing. This study discusses the current research and development on robot actuator, which are used to control the joints of robots, and focuses on developing more efficient technology for joint control, as compared with the current technologies. It also aims to find means to apply the abovementioned technology to diverse industrial fields. We found that easy and effective control of actuators could be achieved by using ZigBee sensor networks, which were widely being used on wireless communications. Throughout the experiments it is proved that the developed wireless actuator could be used for easy control of various robot joints. This technology can be effectively applied to develop two-legged robots that will be able to walk like human, or even quadruped and hexapod robots. It can also be applied to motors used in industry. In this study, we develop an extremely minimized ZigBee sensor network module that can be used to control various servo motors with low power consumption even if it is long distances. We realized effective wireless control by optimizing the ZigBee antenna, and were able to quickly check the status of relevant Tree node through mutual communication between the servo motors composing the ZigBee sensor network and the main server control modules. The developed Servo Motor with ZigBee sensor network modules can be applied in both robotics as well as for home or factory automation.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1987.10b
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• pp.69-73
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• 1987

In this paper the continuous static stable gait, kinematics and the basic control algorithm of the quadruped walking robot have been discussed. The control method described in this paper will be extended for the walking robot to walk on an uneven terrain.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.936-941
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• 2014

Walking mechanisms are very important for legged robots to ensure their stable locomotion. In this research, Klann-linkage is suggested as a walking mechanism for a water-running robot and is optimized using level average analysis. The structure of the Klann-linkage is introduced first and design variables for the Klann-linkage are identified considering the kinematic task of the walking mechanism. Next, the design problem is formulated as a path generation optimization problem. Specifically, the desired path for the foot-pad is defined and the objective function is defined as the structural error between the desired and the generated paths. A process for solving the optimization problem is suggested utilizing the sensitivity analysis of the design variables. As a result, optimized lengths of Klann-linkage are obtained and the optimum trajectory is obtained. It is found that the optimized trajectory improves the cost function by about 62% from the initial one. It is expected that the results from this research can be used as a good example for designing legged robots.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.585-593
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• 2004

Fault-tolerant gait planning in legged locomotion is to design gaits with which legged robots can maintain static stability and motion continuity against a failure in a leg. For planning a robust and deadlock-free fault-tolerant gait, kinematic constraints caused by a failed leg should be closely examined with respect to remaining mobility of the leg. In this paper, based on the authors's previous results, deadlock avoidance scheme for fault-tolerant gait planning is proposed for a hexapod robot walking over even terrain. The considered fault is a locked joint failure, which prevents a joint of a leg from moving and makes it locked in a known position. It is shown that for guaranteeing the existence of the previously proposed fault-tolerant tripod gait of a hexapod robot, the configuration of the failed leg must be within a range of kinematic constraints. Then, for coping with failure situations where the existence condition is not satisfied, the previous fault-tolerant tripod gait is improved by including the adjustment of the foot trajectory. The foot trajectory adjustment procedure is analytically derived to show that it can help the fault-tolerant gait avoid deadlock resulting from the kinematic constraint and does not make any harmful effect on gait mobility. The post-failure walking problem of a hexapod robot with the normal tripod gait is addressed as a case study to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.