• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.582-587
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• 2004

Ultrasonic sensors are widely used in mobile robot applications to recognize external environments, because they are cheap, easy to use, and robust under varying lighting conditions. However, the recognition of objects using a ultrasonic sensor is not so easy due to its characteristics such as narrow beam width and no reflected signal from a inclined object. As one of the alternatives to resolve these problems, use of multiple sensors has been studied. A sequential driving system needs a long measurement time and does not take advantage of multiple sensors. Simultaneous and pulse coding driving system of ultrasonic sensor array cannot measure short distance as the length of the code becomes long. This problem can be resolved by multi-frequency driving of ultrasonic sensors, which allows multi-sensors to be fired simultaneously and adjacent objects to be distinguished. Accordingly, this paper presents a simultaneous and multi-frequency driving system for an ultrasonic sensor array for object recognition. The proposed system is designed and implemented using a DSP and FPGA. A micro-controller board is made using a DSP, Polaroid 6500 ranging modules are modified for firing the multi-frequency signals, and a 5-channel frequency modulated signal generating board is made using a FPGA. To verify the proposed method, experiments were conducted in an environment with overlapping signals, and the flight distances for each sensor were obtained from filtering of the received overlapping signals and calculation of the time-of-flights.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.1025-1031
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• 2007

GPS is widely used for positioning applications and attitude of a vehicle can be found also with multiple antennas. However, extremely weak signal level prevents GPS from indoor operation. DR with accelerometers and gyros and landmark based localization method used for indoor applications increase complexity and cost. In this paper, a simple but very efficient ultrasound based attitude determination system which determines both position and attitude in WSN is given. The range between transmitter and receivers are measured using the arrival time difference between ultrasound and RF signal. The 3 dimensional positions can be found using more than 3 range measurements. Furthermore, if more than 2 transmitters are used, the attitude can be determined using the baseline vectors obtained by differencing transmitter and receiver positions. The prototype system is implemented to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. In addition, an error analysis shows the relation between the attitude error and basel me length, quality of measurement and orientation of a vehicle. The static and dynamic experiments performed by micro mobile robot shows accurate position with less than 1.5cm error and attitude with less than 1 degree error can be obtained continuously with 20cm baseline. It is expected that these results can be adapted without modification to indoor applications such as home cleaning robot and autonomous wheelchair maneuvering.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.197-202
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• 2023

Recently, research on experimental and analytical techniques utilizing microfluidic devices has been pursued. For example, lab-on-a-chip devices that integrate micro-devices onto a single chip for processing small sample quantities have gained significant attention. However, during sample preparation, unnecessary gases can be introduced into the internal channels, thus, impeding device flow and compromising specific function efficiency, including that of analysis and separation. Several methods have been proposed to mitigate this issue, however, many involve cumbersome procedures or suffer from complexities owing to intricate structures. Recently, some approaches have been introduced that utilize hydrophobic device structures to remove gases within channels. In such cases, the permeability of gases passing through the structure becomes a crucial performance factor. In this study, a method involving the deposition and sintering of diluted Ag-ink onto a silicon wafer surface is presented. This is followed by unstructured nano-pattern creation using a Metal Assisted Chemical Etching (MACE) process, which yields a nanostructured surface with unstructured pillar shapes. Subsequently, gas permeability in the spaces formed by these surface structures is investigated. This is achieved by experiments conducted to incorporate a pressure chamber and measure gas permeability. Trends are subsequently analyzed by comparing the results with existing theories. Finally, it can be confirmed that the significance of this study primarily lies in its capability to effectively evaluate gas permeability through unstructured pillar-like nanostructures, thus, providing quantitative values for the appropriate driving pressure and expected gas removal time in practical device operation.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.18-25
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• 2013

Recently the requirement of long-term mobile energy source for mobile robot or small-sized unmanned vehicle is highly increased, and the micro turbine generator(MTG) which is known to have high energy and power density is under development. MTG is designed to have air foil bearing and high speed rotor of which operating speed is 400,000rpm. In the development stage of high speed rotor and bearing, stability analysis for the full operational speed range is essential and the dynamic coefficients such as stiffness and damping coefficients of bearing depending on the rotational speed are required for that. Although perturbation method is usually used to identify the dynamic coefficients, it's not easy to give the perturbation to the high speed rotating rotor. In this study, we present the dynamic coefficients measurement system for air foil bearing which consists of electromagnets, gap sensors, high speed motor and controller. This measurement system can exert the sine sweep force to the rotor-bearing, measure the displacement of rotor and get FRF(Frequency response function) of rotor-bearing. The least square estimation method is applied to identify the dynamic coefficients of bearing from the measured frequency response at the different rpm and the identified dynamic coefficients for the wide rotational speed range are presented.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.64 no.7
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• pp.1081-1087
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• 2015

Recently, the researches of aerial drones are actively executed in various areas, the researches of surface drones and underwater drones are also executed in marine areas. In case of surface drones, they essentially utilize acoustic information by the sonar and consequently have the local information in the obstacle avoidance as the sonar has the limitations due to the beam width and detection range. In order to overcome this, more global method that utilizes optical images by the camera is required. Related to this, the aerial drone with the camera is desirable as the obstacle detection of the surface drone with the camera is impossible in case of the existence of clutters. However, the dynamic-floating aerial drone is not desirable for the long-term operation as its power consumption is high. To solve this problem, a collaborative obstacle avoidance method based on the acoustic information by the sonar of the surface drone and the optical image by the camera of the static-floating aerial drone is proposed. To verify the performance of the proposed method, the collaborative obstacle avoidances of a MSD(Micro Surface Drone) with an OAS(Obstacle Avoidance Sonar) and a BMAD(Balloon-based Micro Aerial Drone) with a camera are executed. The test results show the possibility of real applications and the need for additional studies.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.41-46
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• 2010

In this paper, the fluid dynamic forces and performances of a moving airfoil in the low Reynolds number flow is addressed. In order to simulate the necessary propulsive force for the moving airfoil in a low Reynolds number flow, a lattice-Boltzmann method is used. The critical Reynolds and Strouhal numbers for the thrust generation are investigated for the four propulsion types. It was found that the Normal P&D type produces the largest thrust with the highest efficiency among the investigated types. The leading edge of the airfoil has an effect of deciding the force production types, whereas the trailing edge of the airfoil plays an important role in augmenting or reducing the instability produced by the leading edge oscillation. It is believed that present results can be used to decide the optimal propulsion types for the given Reynolds number flow.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.17-21
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• 2018

The natural frequency of a laminated cantilever microbeam was studied in the present investigation. The microbeam was made of quartz on a silicon chip, and its top and bottom surfaces were coated with thin(~30nm) gold films. An ultrasonic testing platform was employed to resonate the microbeam, and its time domain signal was optically measured. The natural frequency was quantified through the fast Fourier transform of the waveform, and the result showed good agreement with a theoretical estimation from the classical beam theory. This study is expected to provide a dynamic evaluation technique for micro/nanoscale materials and micromechanical structures.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.193-202
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• 2012

In this paper, we propose a new approach for compact range sensor system for real-time robot applications. Instead of using off-the-shelf camera and projector, we devise a compact system with a CMOS image-sensor and a DMD (Digital Micro-mirror Device) that yields smaller dimension ($168{\times}50{\times}60mm$) and lighter weight (500g). We also realize one chip hard-wired processing of projection of structured-light and computing the range by exploiting correspondences between CMOS images-ensor and DMD. This application-specific chip processing is implemented on an FPGA in real-time. Our range acquisition system performs 30 times faster than the same implementation in software. We also devise an efficient methodology to identify a proper light intensity to enhance the quality of range sensor and minimize the decoding error. Our experimental results show that the total-error is reduced by 16% compared to the average case.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.314-321
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• 2002

An endoscope is usually inserted into the human body for the inspection of the gullet, stomach, and large intestine (colon) and this may cause discomfort to patients and damage to tissues during diagnostic or therapeutic procedures. This situation necessitates a self-propelling endoscope. There are many kinds of mechanism to move in a rigid pipe. However, these methods are difficult to apply directly to the endoscope. The main reason is that human intestine cannot be considered as a uniform, straight, and rigid pipe. This paper proposes a flexible loop wheel mechanism, which is adaptable to the human intestine. This mechanism is designed and fabricated by a simple modeling, and tested by an experiment. Finally, the actuator is inserted into the pig colon.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.1028-1036
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• 2004

Ultrasonic sensors are widely used in mobile robot applications to recognize external environments by virtue that they are cheap, easy to use, and robust under varying lighting conditions. In most cases, a single ultrasonic sensor is used to measure the distance to an object based on time-of-flight (TOF) information, whereas multiple sensors are used to recognize the shape of an object, such as a comer, plane, or edge. However, the conventional sequential driving technique involves a long measurement time. This problem can be resolved by pulse coding of ultrasonic signals, which allows multi-sensors to be emitted simultaneously and adjacent objects to be distinguished. Accordingly, this paper presents a new simultaneous coded driving system for an ultrasonic sensor array for object recognition in autonomous mobile robots. The proposed system is designed and implemented. A micro-controller unit is implemented using a DSP, Polaroid 6500 ranging modules are modified for firing the coded signals, and a 5-channel coded signal generating board is made using a FPGA. To verify the proposed method, experiments were conducted in an environment with overlapping signals, and the flight distances fur each sensor were obtained from the received overlapping signals using correlations and conversion to a bipolar PCM-NRZ signal.