• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.419-428
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• 2011

This paper suggests a judgement method for an inclined plane before entrance of it and the detection of obstacle position. Main idea is started from the assumption that obstacle is always on the bottom plane, and corner appears at this position. The process to detect the obstacle consists of three steps. First the 3D data using stereo matching is acquired to detect an obstacle. Second a bottom plane is extracted by using limit condition. Last the obstacle position is found by using Harris corner detection. Obstacle position detection on an inclined plane was verified by outdoor and indoor experiment. In error analysis, it is confirmed that an average error of obstacle detection in outdoor was larger than the error in indoor but the error are within about 0.030 m. This method will be applied to unmanned vehicles to navigate under various environment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.155-162
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• 2009

In walking guide robot, a guide vehicle detects an obstacle distribution in the walking space using range sensors, and generates a 3D grid map to map the obstacle information and the tactile display. And the obstacle information is transferred to a blind pedestrian using tactile feedback. Based on the obstacle information a user plans a walking route and controls the guide vehicle. The algorithm for 3D detection of an obstacle distribution and the method of mapping the generated obstacle map and the tactile display device are proposed in this paper. The experiment for the 3D detection of an obstacle distribution using ultrasonic sensors is performed and estimated. The experimental system consisted of ultrasonic sensors and control system. In the experiment, the detection of fixed obstacles on the ground, the moving obstacle, and the detection of down-step are performed. The performance for the 3D detection of an obstacle distribution and space mapping is verified through the experiment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.321-327
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• 2012

This paper presents a comparative analysis on three different types of performance indices of obstacle detection for an overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring. Due to beam overlap, the entire sensing zone of each ultrasonic sensor can be divided into three smaller sensing subzones, which leads to significant reduction of positional uncertainty in obstacle detection. First, the positional uncertainty in obstacle detection is expressed in terms of the area of a sensing subzone, and type 1 performance index is then defined as the area ratio of side and center sensing subzones. Second, based on the area of a sensing subzone, type 2 performance index is defined taking into account the size of the entire range of obstacle detection as well as the degree of the positional uncertainty in obstacle detection. Third, the positional uncertainty in obstacle detection is now expressed in terms of the length of the uncertainty arc spanning a sensing subzone, and type 3 performance index is then defined as the average value of the uncertainty arc lengths over the entire range of obstacle detection. Fourth, using a commercial low directivity ultrasonic sensor, the changes of three different performance indices depending on the parameter of an overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring are examined and compared.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.552-556
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• 2016

Obstacle detection is a key feature in the safe driving control of electric wheelchairs. The suggested obstacle detection algorithm was designed to provide obstacle avoidance direction and detect the existence of cliffs. By means of this information, the wheelchair can determine where to steer and whether to stop or go. A 3D depth camera (Microsoft KINECT) is used to scan the 3D point data of the scene, extract information on obstacles, and produce a steering direction for obstacle avoidance. To be specific, ground detection is applied to extract the obstacle candidates from the scanned data and the candidates are projected onto a 2D map. The 2D map provides discretized information of the extracted obstacles to decide on the avoidance direction (left or right) of the wheelchair. As an additional function, cliff detection is developed. By defining the "cliffband," the ratio of the predefined band area and the detected area within the band area, the cliff detection algorithm can decide if a cliff is in front of the wheelchair. Vehicle tests were carried out by applying the algorithm to the electric wheelchair. Additionally, detailed functions of obstacle detection, such as providing avoidance direction and detecting the existence of cliffs, were demonstrated.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.183-192
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• 2003

Obstacle detection and avoidance are considered as one of the key technologies on an unmanned vehicle system. In this paper, we propose a method of obstacle detection and avoidance and it is composed of vehicle control, modeling, and sensor experiments. Obstacle detection and avoidance consist of two parts: one is longitudinal control system for acceleration and deceleration and the other is lateral control system for steering control. Each system is used for unmanned vehicle control, which notes its location, recognizes obstacles surrounding it, and makes a decision how fast to proceed according to circumstances. During the operation, the control system of the vehicle can detect obstacles and perform obstacle avoidance on the road, which involves vehicle velocity. In this paper, we propose a method for vehicle control, modeling, and obstacle avoidance, which are evaluated through road tests.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.133-138
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• 2004

Today, the obstacle detection system has massive size and restrictive detection range. To solve these problems, this paper proposes the capacitance variation detector using the variated capacitance value as a result of the obstacle approaching. If obstacle approaches, the capacitance value of capacitance sensor is increased and the operating frequency of oscillator is decreased. Then this changed frequency appears to the output of the mixer that operate down conversion. The capacitance variation detector is produced by Hynix$0.35{\mu}$ CMOS process. In experiment result, the frequency of final output is 6.81 MHz at no obstacle and 31.45 MHz at approaching obstacle. In conclusion, proposed capacitance variation detector has small size, low power consumption and easiness to set up anywhere. So it is expected to substitute the obstacle detector.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.677-685
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• 2008

This paper proposes algorithm for the obstacle detection and classification using a single laser scanner. In a measurement data from a laser scanner, there exist points with large differential value called singular points, which can be used to obtain the boundary of an obstacle such that obstacle information can be analyzed. On the other hand, measurement data include a lot of measurement error, which makes it difficult to analyze the accurate obstacle information. To solve this problem, the least square estimation algorithm is used to obtain the accurate information using a single laser scanner, by compensation for the measurement error. This algorithm can be used for the effective obstacle avoidance of mobile robots, and the experimental results are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the propose algorithm.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.18B no.5
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• pp.255-264
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose a forward vehicle detection algorithm using column detection and bird's-eye view mapping based on stereo vision. The algorithm can detect forward vehicles robustly in real complex traffic situations. The algorithm consists of the three steps, namely road feature-based column detection, bird's-eye view mapping-based obstacle segmentation, obstacle area remerging and vehicle verification. First, we extract a road feature using maximum frequent values in v-disparity map. And we perform a column detection using the road feature as a new criterion. The road feature is more appropriate criterion than the median value because it is not affected by a road traffic situation, for example the changing of obstacle size or the number of obstacles. But there are still multiple obstacles in the obstacle areas. Thus, we perform a bird's-eye view mapping-based obstacle segmentation to divide obstacle accurately. We can segment obstacle easily because a bird's-eye view mapping can represent the position of obstacle on planar plane using depth map and camera information. Additionally, we perform obstacle area remerging processing because a segmented obstacle area may be same obstacle. Finally, we verify the obstacles whether those are vehicles or not using a depth map and gray image. We conduct experiments to prove the vehicle detection performance by applying our algorithm to real complex traffic situations.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1996.10b
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• pp.97-100
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• 1996

In this paper, we describe an algorithm which estimate road following direction using the vanishing point property and obstacle detection. This method of detecting the lane markers in a set of continuous lane highway images using linear approximation is presented. This algorithm is designed for accurate and robust extraction of this data as well as high processing speed. Also, this algorithm reckon distance and chase about an obstacle. It include four algorithms which are lane prediction, lane extraction, road following parameter estimation and obstacle detection algorithm. High accuracy was proven by quantitative evaluation using simulated images. Both robustness and the practicality of real time video rate processing were then confirmed through experiment using VTR real road images.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.858-862
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• 2015

This paper presents a new forward-viewing mono-camera based obstacle detection algorithm for mobile robots. The proposed method extracts the coarse location of an obstacle in an image using inverse perspective mapping technique from sequential images. In the next step, graph-cut based image labeling is conducted for estimating the exact obstacle boundary. The graph-cut based labeling algorithm labels the image pixels as either obstacle or floor as the final outcome. Experiments are performed to verify the obstacle detection performance of the developed algorithm in several examples, including a book, box, towel, and flower pot. The low illumination condition, low color contrast between floor and obstacle, and floor pattern cases are also tested.