• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.20-29
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• 2007

Korean farmers have purchased agricultural dryer and low temperature storage system apart. In this study, the system was designed and constructed to investigate the practical application possibility of the air to air heat pump as drying and low temperature storage system for agricultural products with providing basic data. The performance and drying characteristics of the system evaluated by drying red pepper. The value of coefficient of performance of the system for heating was from 1.8 to 2.2 when ambient air temperature varied from 13$^{\circ}C$ to 23$^{\circ}C$. For operating the heat pump as dryer for drying red pepper by setting three drying air temperature of 50, 55 and 60$^{\circ}C$, specific moisture extraction rates meaning amount of energy consumption for removing moisture of 1kg from red pepper were 1.095, 1.017 and 1.094 kg$_{water}$/kWh, respectively. The drying period up to moisture ratio of 0.02 were 31, 26 and 21 hour, respectively. The lightness, redness, yellowness and chroma differences of red pepper dried by the heat pump dryer were lowered than those of red pepper dried by conventional heated air dryer except for yellowness difference at drying air temperature of 60$^{\circ}C$.

• Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
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• 제1권2호
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• pp.106-110
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• 2000

An integrated on-line inspection system was constructed with seven cameras, half mirrors to split images. 720 nm and 970 nm band pass filters, illumination chamber having several tungsten-halogen lamps, one main computer, one color frame grabber, two 4-channel multiplexors, and flat plate conveyer, etc. A total of seven images, that is, one color image form the top of an apple and two B/W images from each side (top, right and left) could be captured and displayed on a computer monitor through the multiplexor. One of the two B/W images captured from each side is 720nm filtered image and the other is 970 nm. With this system an on-line grading software was developed to evaluate appearance quality. On-line test results with Fuji apples that were manually fed on the conveyer showed that grading accuracies of the color, defect and shape were 95.3%, 86% and 88.6%, respectively. Grading time was 0.35 second per apple on an average. Therefore, this on-line grading system could be used for inspection of the final products produced from an apple sorting system.

• Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.16-21
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• 2003

In the agricultural field, a machine vision system has been widely used to automate most inspection processes especially in quality grading. Though machine vision system was very effective in quantifying geometrical quality factors, it had a deficiency in quantifying color information. This study was conducted to evaluate color of beef using machine vision system. Though measuring color of a beef using machine vision system had an advantage of covering whole lean tissue area at a time compared to a colorimeter, it revealed the problem of sensitivity depending on the system components such as types of camera, lighting conditions, and so on. The effect of color balancing control of a camera was investigated and multi-layer BP neural network based color calibration process was developed. Color calibration network model was trained using reference color patches and showed the high correlation with L*a*b* coordinates of a colorimeter. The proposed calibration process showed the successful adaptability to various measurement environments such as different types of cameras and light sources. Compared results with the proposed calibration process and MLR based calibration were also presented. Color calibration network was also successfully applied to measure the color of the beef. However, it was suggested that reflectance properties of reference materials for calibration and test materials should be considered to achieve more accurate color measurement.

• 한국농업기계학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국농업기계학회 2000년도 THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY ENGINEERING. V.III
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• pp.551-559
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• 2000

An integrated on-line inspection system was constructed with seven cameras, half mirrors to split images, 720 nm and 970 nm band pass filters, illumination chamber having several tungsten-halogen lamps, one main computer, one color frame grabber, two 4-channel multiplexors, and flat plate conveyer, etc., so that a total of seven images, that is, one color image from the top side of an apple and two B/W images from each side (top, right and left) could be captured and displayed on a computer monitor through the multiplexor. One of the two B/W images captured from each side is 720nm filter image and the other is 970nm. With this system an on-line grading software was developed to evaluate appearance quality. On-line test results to the Fuji apples that were manually fed on the conveyer showed that grading accuracies of the color, defective and shape were 95.3%, 86% and 91%, respectively. Grading time was 0.35 sec per apple on an average. Therefore, this on-line grading system could be used for inspection of the final products produced from an apple sorting system.

• 한국농업기계학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국농업기계학회 2000년도 THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY ENGINEERING. V.II
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• pp.489-497
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• 2000

Since Chinese cabbages weigh 3 to 5kgf and are big in size at the time of harvest, handling operations such as harvesting, loading and unloading including transportation require the highest labor demand among all other cultivation processes. Recently, though several cabbage harvesters were developed in Japan and Europe, those harvesters were not suitable for Chinese cabbages cultivated in Korea because of the size and shape. The cabbage harvester is almost meaningless without any proper cabbage piling and pallet unloading mechanism. Most harvesters developed so far adopted a sort of slide and free falling way in collecting cabbages into the pallet. Three or four labors are usually required for cleaning incoming cabbages and loading those in the pallet. Because of the required time for piling cabbages without severe damage and the required space capacity to carry empty and loaded pallets, harvesting speed should be adjusted in accordance with time required for consecutive operations. Up to now, any automatic or semi-automatic collecting device has not been developed in the world to pile cabbages on the layer one by one into the pallet in the ordered way with little damage and to unload pallet from the harvester continuously during the harvest process. To compromise system expenses and function, Semi-automatic cabbage piling and pallet unloading mechanism was devised and it required one labor. The foldable mesh pallet with a size of 1050mm x 1050mm x 1000mm and holding capacity of around 70 cabbages was utilized. The prototype for piling and unloading mechanism was composed of three parts such as feeding device, automatic piling device with retractable bellows, and pallet unloading device. Prior to developing the prototype, the geometric properties and the amount of the damage of the cabbage caused during the piling operation were investigated. Considering the height of the pallet, a series of cabbage carrying plates were mounted to the bracket chain to lift and to carry cabbages to the loading device. Indoor laboratory experiments showed that the cabbage carrying chain conveyor worked successfully. Considering the conveying speed 0.46m/sec of the pull up belt from the cabbages on the ground, the speed of cabbage carrying chain conveyor worked property in the range of 0.26m/sec to 0.36m/sec. The system allowed the operator to modify the position of cabbage slightly. Overall system worked successfully resulting into almost same capacity without severe damage to the cabbage as human did.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제28권6호
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• pp.511-516
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• 2003

컴퓨터 시각 기술은 다양한 농작업 생력화에 있어 핵심적인 역할을 해왔다. 비록 컴퓨터 시각 기술이 광범위한 분야에 성공적으로 적용되고 있다고는 하지만 인간의 시각을 통한 인지 능력에 비하면 현재의 컴퓨터 시각 기술은 여전히 매우 미흡한 수준에 있다고 하겠다. 특히, 작업환경이 비구조적이고 가변적인 농작업 환경 하에서의 작업의 생력화는 이러한 기술적 문제를 극복하는 것이 작업의 성패를 좌우하게 된다. 본 논문에서는 원격작업 개념을 도입하여 작업자와 작업기계간의 호환적인 인터페이스를 구축하고 컴퓨터와 인간의 혼합형 의사결정 시스템을 구현하여 기존의 컴퓨터 시각 기술이 갖는 인지 처리 능력의 한계를 극복하는 시스템을 제안하였다. 시설재배에 요구되는 전정, 관수, 방제, 제초, 수확, 운반 등과 같은 다양한 작업들은 작업 대상체에 대한 인식을 바탕으로 수행된다. 특히 가변적인 자연 조명 환경 하에서 수박과 줄기 그리고 잎이 혼재되어 있는 재배현장의 영상으로부터 수박을 추출하여 그 위치 좌표를 산출하는 작업은 기술적으로 매우 어려운 작업이며 수박이 잎과 줄기로 덮혀 있는 경우 더욱 어려워진다. 제안한 개념을 구현하기 위하여 무선으로 수신되는 재배 현장의 수박 영상으로부터 수박을 인식하도록 하였다. 개발한 시스템은 작업자(농민), 컴퓨터 그리고 자동화 작업설비가 상대적으로 수월성을 갖는 기능을 중심으로 역할을 분담하도록 구축하였다 개발 시스템은 크게 무선원격 모니터링 및 작업제어 모듈, 무선원격 영상 획득 및 데이터 송수신 모듈, 작업자와 컴퓨터간의 인터페이스 모듈로 구성하였다 작업자는 RF 송수신 모듈을 통하여 무선으로 획득되어 터치 스크린에 보여지는 영상을 통하여 작업 지시를 하게 되고 이 작업 지시로부터 컴퓨터는 국부 영상처리 시퀀스를 통하여 수박을 추출하고 위치를 산출하게 된다. 개발한 인터페이스 시스템은 가변적이고 복잡한 작업 환경하에서 작업 대상체의 정보를 실시간으로 성공적으로 추출하였다. 제안한 원격작업 인터페이스 시스템은 다양한 생물생산 작업의 생력화를 촉진하는 중심적 역할을 할 것으로 기대된다.

• 제어로봇시스템학회논문지
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.371-379
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• 2006

Increasing requirements for the high quality of industrial robot performance made the vibration control issue very important because the vibration makes it difficult to achieve quick response of robot motion and may bring mechanical damage to the robot. This paper presents a vibration control solution for industrial robots which have flexible joints. The joint flexibility is modeled as a two-mass system. And we analyze the vibration problem of a classical P-PI controller when it used for the flexible joints of industrial robots. Then a state feedback controller is designed for vibration suppression of the two-mass system. Finally, a gain-scheduling method is designed for maintaining control performance in spite of the time-varying nature of each joint's load side inertia. Simulation and experimental results show effective vibration suppression and uniform properties in overshoot in spite of the variation of load. The result of this study can be applied to the appropriate gain manipulation of many other mechatronic devices which have the two-mass system with varying load side inertia.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• 제7권5호
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• pp.609-618
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• 2006

This paper presents the lateral control of an autonomous vehicle by using a look-ahead sensing system. In look-ahead sensing by an absolute positioning system, a reference lane, constructed by straight lanes or circular lanes, was switched by a segment switching algorithm. To cope with sensor noise and modeling uncertainty, a robust LMI-based $H_{\infty}$ lateral controller was designed by the feedback of lateral offset and yaw angle error at the vehicle look-ahead. In order to verify the safety and the performance of lateral control, a scaled-down vehicle was developed and the location of the vehicle was detected by using an ultrasonic local positioning system. In the mechatronic scaled-down vehicle, the lateral model and parameters are verified and estimated by a J-turn test. For the lane change and reference lane tracking, the lateral controllers are used experimentally. The experimental results show that the $H_{\infty}$ controller is robust and has better performance compared with look-down sensing.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제33권5호
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• pp.326-332
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• 2008

A respiration measurement system for vital signs was developed. Respiration signals were measured, processed, and analyzed. Four electrodes, attached on the surface of the skin, were used to monitor respiration signals by impedance pneumography. The measured signals were amplified, detrended, filtered, and transferred toan embedded module. The Kalman filter was used to remove motion artifact from the respiration signals. Experiments were conducted at stable condition and walking condition to evaluate the performance of the system. Respiration rates of five males and five females were measured and analyzed at each condition. The referenced respiration signal was determined by temperature of nose surroundings. The results showed that the respiration rates at the walking condition had more motion artifacts than the stable condition. The accuracies of the respiration measurement system with Kalman filter were found as 96% at the stable condition and 95% at the walking condition. The results showed that the Kalman filter was an effective tool to remove the motion artifact from the respiration signal.

• 대한기계학회논문집A
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• 제28권7호
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• pp.1029-1037
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• 2004

High-speed/precision servomechanisms have been widely used in the manufacturing and semiconductor industries. In order to ensure the required high-speed and high-precision specifications in servomechanisms, an integrated design methodology is required, where the interactions between mechanical and electrical subsystems will have to be considered simultaneously. For the first step of the integrated design process, it is necessary to obtain not only strict mathematical models of separate subsystems but also formulation of an integrated design problem. A two-degree-of-freedom controller described in the discrete-time domain is considered as an electrical subsystem in this paper. An accurate identification process of the mechanical subsystem is conducted to verify the obtained mathematical model. Mechanical and electrical constraints render the integrated design problem accurate. Analysis of the system performance according to design and operating parameters is conducted for better understanding of the dynamic behavior and interactions of the servomechanism. Experiments are performed to verify the validity of the integrated design problem in the x-Y positioning system.