• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.898-904
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• 2010

Unmanned autonomous forklifts have a great potential to enhance the productivity of material handling in various applications because these forklifts can pick up and deliver loads without an operator and any fixed guide. There are, however, many technical difficulties in developing such forklifts including localization, map building, sensor fusion, control and so on. Implementation, which is often neglected, is one of practical issues in developing such an autonomous device. This is because the system requires numerous sensors, actuators, and controllers that need to be connected with each other, and the number of connections grows very rapidly as the number of devices grows. Another requirement on the integration is that the system should allow changes in the system design so that modification and addition of system components can be accommodated without too much effort. This paper presents a network-based distributed approach where system components are connected to a shared CAN network, and control functions are divided into small tasks that are distributed over a number of microcontrollers with a limited computing capacity. This approach is successfully applied to develop an unmanned forklift.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.713-721
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• 2010

E-textile technology has earned a great deal of interest in many fields; however, existing wearable network protocols are not optimized for use with conductive yarn. In this paper, some of the basic properties of conductive textiles and requirements on wearable personal area networks (PANs) are reviewed. Then, we present a wearable personal network (WPN), which is a four-layered wearable PAN using bus topology. We have designed the WPN to be a lightweight protocol to work with a variety of microcontrollers. The profile layer is provided to make the application development process easy. The data link layer exchanges frames in a master-slave manner in either the reliable or best-effort mode. The lower part of the data link layer and the physical layer of WPN are made of a fabric serial-bus interface which is capable of measuring bus signal properties and adapting to medium variation. After a formal verification of operation and performances of WPN, we implemented WPN communication modules (WCMs) on small flexible printed circuit boards. In order to demonstrate the behavior of our WPN on a textile, we designed a WPN tutorial shirt prototype using implemented WCMs and conductive yarn.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.3_4
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• pp.393-408
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• 2004

There exists a clear need to monitor the performance of civil structures over their operational lives. Current commercial monitoring systems suffer from various technological and economic limitations that prevent their widespread adoption. The wires used to route measurements from system sensors to the centralized data server represent one of the greatest limitations since they are physically vulnerable and expensive from an installation and maintenance standpoint. In lieu of cables, the introduction of low-cost wireless communications is proposed. The result is the design of a prototype wireless sensing unit that can serve as the fundamental building block of wireless modular monitoring systems (WiMMS). An additional feature of the wireless sensing unit is the incorporation of computational power in the form of state-of-art microcontrollers. The prototype unit is validated with a series of laboratory and field tests. The Alamosa Canyon Bridge is employed to serve as a full-scale benchmark structure to validate the performance of the wireless sensing unit in the field. A traditional cable-based monitoring system is installed in parallel with the wireless sensing units for performance comparison.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.201-206
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• 2010

PLCs are special purpose microcontrollers used in most automatic control systems such as plants, embedded systems, and intelligent buildings. LD is one of the most popular languages among PLC languages. For now LD programs are mainly verified by simulation and testing which has a lot of limitation. This paper describes how to translate a given LD program into an input of a model checker so that LD program is verified by model checking. We define formal semantics of LD programs and SMV models and specify a formal definition of the translation function which preserves semantics between LD programs and SMV models.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.1-7
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• 2015

This paper deals with the design and operation of a hybrid daylighting system that uses natural and artificial lighting to enhance visual comfort in buildings. The system was developed using an AVR micro controller for solar tracking in conjunction with dimming controls, which, acting together, enables the maximum use of natural daylight and also improves energy efficiency in buildings. Experimental results clearly demonstrates the usefulness of the present system capable of enhancing indoor lighting conditions when sufficient daylight is available and distributed appropriately in harmony with artificial lighting.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.1018-1023
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• 2010

The CAN (Controller Area Network) system is the most dominant protocol for in-vehicle networking system because it provides bounded transmission delay among ECUs (Electronic Control Units) at data rates between 125Kbps and 1Mbps. And, many automotive companies have chosen the CAN protocol for their in-vehicle networking system such as chassis network system because of its excellent communication characteristics. However, the increasing number of ECUs and the need for more intelligent functions such as ADASs (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) or IVISs (In-Vehicle Information Systems) require a network with more network capacity and the real-time QoS (Quality-of-Service). As one approach to enhancing the network capacity of a CAN system, this paper introduces a CAN system with dual communication channel. And, this paper presents a distributed message allocation method that allocates messages to the more appropriate channel using forecast traffic of each channel. Finally, an experimental testbed using commercial off-the-shelf microcontrollers with two CAN protocol controllers was used to demonstrate the feasibility of the CAN system with dual communication channel using the distributed message allocation method.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.1051-1058
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• 2011

Unmanned autonomous forklifts have a great potential to enhance the productivity of material handling in various applications because these forklifts can pick up and deliver loads without an operator and any fixed guide. Especially, automation of pallet loading and unloading technique is useful for enhancing performance of logistics and reducing cost for automation system. There are, however, many technical difficulties in developing such forklifts including localization, map building, sensor fusion, control, and so on. This is because the system requires numerous sensors, actuators, and controllers that need to be connected with each other, and the number of connections grows very rapidly as the number of devices grows. This paper presents a vision sensorbased autonomous loading and unloading for network-based unmanned forklift where system components are connected to a shared CAN network. Functions such as image processing and control algorithm are divided into small tasks that are distributed over a number of microcontrollers with a limited computing capacity. And the experimental results show that proposed architecture can be an appropriate choice for autonomous loading in the unmanned forklift.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.104-113
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• 2006

Satellites have provided the impetus for the orderly development of reliability engineering research and analysis because they tend to have complex systems and hence acute problems. They were instrumental in developing mathematical models for reliability, as well as design techniques to permit quantitative specification, prediction and measurement of reliability. Reliability engineering is based on implementing measures which insure an item will perform its mission successfully. The discipline of reliability engineering consists of two fundamental aspects; $(1^{st})$ paying attention to details, and $(2^{nd})$ handling uncertainties. This paper uses some of the basic concepts, formulas and examples of reliability theory in application. This paper emphasizes the practical reliability analysis of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Micro-satellite power subsystem. Approaches for specifying and allocating the reliability of each element of the power system so as to meet the overall power system reliability requirements, as well as to give detailed modeling and predicting of equipment/system reliability are introduced. The results are handled and analyzed to form the final reliability results for the satellite power system. The results show that the Electric Power Subsystem (EPS) reliability meets the requirements with quad microcontrollers (MC), two boards working as main and cold redundant while each board contains two MCs in a hot redundant.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.8
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• pp.4006-4024
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• 2017

Internet of Things (IoT) will transform our daily life by making different aspects of life smart like smart home, smart workplace, smart health and smart city etc. IoT is based on network of physical objects equipped with sensors and actuators that can gather and share data with other objects or humans. Secure communication is required for successful working of IoT. In this paper, a total of 13 lightweight cryptographic algorithms are evaluated based on their implementation results on 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit microcontrollers and their appropriateness is examined for resource-constrained scenarios like IoT. These algorithms are analysed by dissecting them into their logical and structural elements. This paper tries to investigate the relationships between the structural elements of an algorithm and its performance. Association rule mining is used to find association patterns among the constituent elements of the selected ciphers and their performance. Interesting results are found on the type of element used to improve the cipher in terms of code size, RAM requirement and execution time. This paper will serve as a guideline for cryptographic designers to design improved ciphers for resource constrained environments like IoT.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.46-55
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• 2021

A forklift is a powered industrial vehicle used to lift and move materials over short distances. Nowadays, almost all forklifts are equipped with an automatic transmission due to its improved operator comfort and increased productivity. Thanks to marked improvement of transmission control unit equipped with highly-advanced microcontrollers, recently developed automatic transmission for forklift have various auxiliary functions such as creep, auto retardation, and automatic shift with excellent shift quality. This paper deals with the creep function which enables one to maneuver a forklift at the designated low speed by slip control of clutches. The design of creep function was based on four modes of creep operation depending on the status of the operator's shift lever and accelerator pedal. Control algorithms and control parameters for each mode were designed to achieve the desired static and dynamic performance. Vehicle test for the designed creep function was carried out with an independently developed embedded controller. Test results confirmed good creep speed control without speed error at a steady state with a mild shift shock during mode changes by stepping or releasing the accelerator.