• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.952-959
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• 2016

This paper proposes a novel indoor positioning system (IPS) that uses a calibrated camera sensor network and dense 3D map information. The proposed IPS information is obtained by generating a bird's-eye image from multiple camera images; thus, our proposed IPS can provide accurate position information when objects (e.g., the mobile robot or pedestrians) are detected from multiple camera views. We evaluate the proposed IPS in a real environment with moving objects in a wireless camera sensor network. The results demonstrate that the proposed IPS can provide accurate position information for moving objects. This can improve the localization performance for mobile robot operation.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.81-86
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• 2004

This paper describes self-localization of a mobile robot from the multiple candidates of landmarks in outdoor environment. Our robot uses omnidirectional vision system for efficient self-localization. This vision system acquires the visible information of all direction views. The robot uses feature of landmarks whose size is bigger than that of others in image such as building, sculptures, placard etc. Robot uses vertical edges and those merged regions as the feature. In our previous work, we found the problem that landmark matching is difficult when selected candidates of landmarks belonging to region of repeating the vertical edges in image. To overcome these problems, robot uses the merged region of vertical edges. If interval of vertical edges is short then robot bundles them regarding as the same region. Thus, these features are selected as candidates of landmarks. Therefore, the extracted merged region of vertical edge reduces the ambiguity of landmark matching. Robot compares with the candidates of landmark between previous and current image. Then, robot is able to find the same landmark between image sequences using the proposed feature and method. We achieved the efficient self-localization result using robust landmark matching method through the experiments implemented in our campus.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.280-285
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• 2011

Recently, with the development of service robots and the concept of ubiquitous, the position estimation of mobile objects has received great interest. Some of the localization schemes are introduced, which provide the relative location of the moving objects subjected to accumulated errors. To implement a real time localization system, a new absolute position estimation method for a mobile robot in indoor environment is proposed. Design and implementation of the localization system comes from the usage of active beacon systems (based upon RFID technology). The active beacon system is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter. The RFID receiver gets the synchronization signal from the mobile robot and the ultra-sonic transmitter sends out the traveling signal to be used for measuring the distance. Position of a mobile robot in a three dimensional space can be calculated basically from the distance information from three beacons and the absolute position information of the beacons themselves. In some case, the mobile robot can acquire the ultrasonic signals from only one or two beacons, due to the obstacles located along the moving path. In this paper, a position estimation scheme using fewer than three sensors is developed. Also, the extended Kalman filter algorithm is applied for the improvement of position estimation accuracy of the mobile robot.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.291-300
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• 2008

In this paper power system and drive-train for omni-directional autonomous mobile robots with multiple energy storage units are presented. Because in proposed system, which is implemented in soccer robots, the ability of power flow control from of multiple separated energy storage units and speed control for each motor are combined, these robots can be derived by more than one power source. This capability, allow robot to diversify its energy source by employing hybrid power sources. In this research Lithium ion polymer batteries have been used for main and auxiliary energy storage units because of their high power and energy densities. And to protect them against deep discharge, over current and short circuit, a protection circuit was designed. The other parts of our robot power system are DC-DC converters and kicker circuit. The simulation and experimental results show proposed scheme and extracted equations are valid and energy management and speed control can be achieved properly using this method. The filed experiments show robot mobility functions to perform the requested motion is enough and it has a high maneuverability in the field.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.1047-1055
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• 2009

Since nuclear and chemical materials could damage people and disturb battlefield missions in a wide region, nuclear/chemical reconnaissance systems utilizing multiple mobile robots are highly desirable for rapid and safe reconnaissance. In this paper, we design a nuclear/chemical reconnaissance system including mobile robots. Also we propose time-efficient trajectory planning algorithms using grid coverage and contour finding methods for reconnaissance operation. For grid coverage, we performed in analysis on time consumption for various trajectory patterns generated by straight lines and arcs. We proposed BCF (Bounded Contour Finding) and BCFEP (Bounded Contour Finding with Ellipse Prediction) algorithms for contour finding. With these grid coverage and contour finding algorithms, we suggest trajectory planning algorithms for single, two or four mobile robots. Various simulations reveal that the proposed algorithms improve time-efficiency in nuclear/chemical reconnaissance missions in the given area. Also we conduct basic experiments using a commercial mobile robot and verify the time efficiency of the proposed contour finding algorithms.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.379-384
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• 2013

We propose a new global positioning method for the indoor mobile robots. The multiple indoor lights fixed in ceiling are used as the landmarks of positioning system. The ceiling images are acquired by the fisheye lens camera mounted on the moving robot. The position and orientation of the lights are extracted by binarization and labeling techniques. Also the boundary lines between ceiling and walls are extracted to identify the order of each light. The robot position is then calculated from the extracted position and known position of the lights. The proposed system can increase the accuracy and reduce the computation time comparing with the other positioning methods using natural landmark. Experimental results are presented to show the performance of the method.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.181-193
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• 2009

This paper presents a framework for controlling mobile multiple robots connected by communication networks. This framework provides novel methods to control coordinated systems using mobile agents. The combination of the mobile agent and mobile multiple robots opens a new horizon of efficient use of mobile robot resources. Instead of physical movement of multiple robots, mobile software agents can migrate from one robot to another so that they can minimize energy consumption in aggregation. The imaginary application is making "carts," such as found in large airports, intelligent. Travelers pick up carts at designated points but leave them arbitrary places. It is a considerable task to re-collect them. It is, therefore, desirable that intelligent carts (intelligent robots) draw themselves together automatically. Simple implementation may be making each cart has a designated assembly point, and when they are free, automatically return to those points. It is easy to implement, but some carts have to travel very long way back to their own assembly point, even though it is located close to some other assembly points. It consumes too much unnecessary energy so that the carts have to have expensive batteries. In order to ameliorate the situation, we employ mobile software agents to locate robots scattered in a field, e.g. an airport, and make them autonomously determine their moving behaviors by using a clustering algorithm based on the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). ACO is the swarm intelligence-based methods, and a multi-agent system that exploit artificial stigmergy for the solution of combinatorial optimization problems. Preliminary experiments have provided a favorable result. In this paper, we focus on the implementation of the controlling mechanism of the multi-robots using the mobile agents.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.176-180
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• 1998

We may gaze at some peculiar scenes of flocking of birds and fishes. This paper demonstrates that multiple agent mobile robots show complex behaviors from efficient and strategic rules. The simulated flock are realized by a distributed behavioral model and each mobile robot decides its own motion as an individual which moves constantly by sensing the dynamic environment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.861-866
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• 2013

This paper presents the development of a racing game by controlling multiple smartphones based on ad hoc communication. The proposed racing game by the smartphone-based control interface does not require any specific game console or remote controller. Thus, any multiple users who have smartphones are able to play the game in a monitor at the same time. In addition, the developed game is applicable to actual mobile robots in cases where the positions of all robots are measured, since its game unit is a mobile robot model with a differential drive. An experimental result shows that the racing game in a PC can be realized by the proposed communication interface through four iPhones based on acceleration sensors.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1927-1932
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• 2003

In a previous study, the authors have proposed the Cooperative Collision Avoidance (CCA) method which enables mobile robots to cooperatively avoid collisions, by extending the concept of the Velocity Obstacle to multiple robot systems. The method introduced an evaluation function considering an operation objective so that each robot can choose the velocity which optimizes the function. As the evaluation function could be of an arbitrary type, this method is applicable to a wide variety of tasks. However, it complicates the optimization of the function especially in real-time. In addition, construction of the evaluation function requires an operation objective of the other robot which is very hard to obtain without communication. In this paper, the CCA method is improved considering such problems for implementation. To decrease computational costs, the previous method is simplified by introducing two essential assumptions. Then, by treating the desired direction of locomotion for each robot as the operation objective, an operation objective estimator which estimates the desired direction of the other robot is introduced. The only measurement required is the other robot's relative position, since the other information can be obtained through the estimation. Hence, communicational devices that are necessary for most other cooperative methods are not required. Moreover, mobile robots employing the method can avoid collisions with uncooperative robots or moving obstacles as well as with cooperative robots. Consequently, this improved method can be applied to general dynamic environments consisting of various mobile robots.