• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2012

Purpose: An autonomous robot was developed for harvesting strawberries cultivated in bench-type systems. Methods: The harvest robot consisted of four main components: an autonomous vehicle, a manipulator with four degrees of freedom (DOF), an end effector with two DOFs, and a color computer vision system. Strawberry detection was performed based on 3D image and distance information obtained from a stereo CCD color camera and a laser device, respectively. Results: In this work, a Cartesian type manipulator system was designed, including an intermediate revolute axis and a double driven arm-based joint axis, so that it could generate collision-free motions during harvesting. A DC servomotor-driven end-effector, consisting of a gripper and a cutter, was designed for gripping and cutting the strawberry stem without damaging the strawberry itself. Real-time position tracking algorithms were developed to detect, recognize, trace, and approach strawberries under natural light conditions. Conclusion: The developed robot system could harvest a strawberry within 7 seconds without damage.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.299-303
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• 2004

In our pervious paper, a new parallel-type spherical 3-degree-of-freedom mechanism consisting of a two-degree-of-freedom parallel module and a serial RRR subchain was proposed[1]. In this paper, its improved version is suggested and implemented. Differently from the previous 3-dof spherical mechanism, gear chains are incorporated into the current version of the mechanism to drive the distal revolute joint of the serial subchain from the base of the mechanism and in fact, the modification significantly improves kinematic characteristics of the mechanism within its workspace. Firstly, after a brief description on its structure, the closed-form solutions of both the forward and the reverse position analysis are derived. Secondly, the first-order kinematic model of the mechanism for the inputs which are assumed to be located at the base is derived. Thirdly, through the simulations of the kinematic analysis via. kinematic isotropic index, it is confirmed that the mechanism has much more improved isotropic properties throughout the workspace of the mechanism than the previous mechanism in [1]. Lastly, the proposed mechanism is implemented to verify the results from this analysis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.10
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• pp.1261-1267
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• 2013

In multibody mechanical systems, low-degree-of-freedom (DOF) joints such as revolute and translational joints are much more frequently used than high-DOF joints. In order to formulate kinematic constraint equations, especially for low-DOF joints, in an efficient and systematic manner, this paper presents a parametric generalized coordinate formulation as a new approach for describing constraint equations. In the proposed approach, joint constraint equations are formulated in terms of a mixed set of Cartesian and parametric generalized coordinates, which drastically reduces the complexity and computational cost of the partial derivatives of the constraints such as the constraint Jacobian. The proposed formulation is validated using a simple cylinder-crank system with an implicit integrator.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.455-463
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• 2012

In this study, we calculate dynamic constrained force of tower top and blade root of a floating offshore wind turbine. The floating offshore wind turbine is multibody system which consists of a floating platform, a tower, a nacelle, and a hub and three blades. All of these parts are regarded as a rigid body with six degree-of-freedom(DOF). The platform and the tower are connected with fixed joint, and the tower, the nacelle, and the hub are successively connected with revolute joint. The hub and three blades are connected with fixed joint. The recursive formulation is adopted for constructing the equations of motion for the floating wind turbine. The non-linear hydrostatic force, the linear hydrodynamic force, the aerodynamic force, the mooring force, and gravitational forces are considered as external forces. The dynamic load at the tower top, rotor shaft, and blade root of the floating wind turbine are simulated in time domain by solving the equations of motion numerically. From the simulation results, the mutual effects of the dynamic response between the each part of the floating wind turbine are discussed and can be used as input data for the structural analysis of the floating offshore wind turbine.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.61 no.12
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• pp.1911-1919
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• 2012

In this paper, we focus on a robotic sealing process in which three robots are used. Each robot can be considered as a 7 axis redundant robot of which the first joint is prismatic and the last 6 joints are revolute. In the factory floor, robot path planning is not a simple problem and is not automated. They need experienced operators who can operate robots by teaching and playing back fashion. However, the robotic sealing process is well organized so the relative positions and orientations of the objects in the floor and robot paths are all pre-determined. Therefore by adopting robotic theory, we can optimally plan robot pathes without using teaching. In this paper, we analyze the sealing robot by using redundant manipulator theory and propose three different methods for path planning. For sealing paths outside of a car body, we propose two methods. The first one is resolving redundancy by using pseudo-inverse of Jacobian and the second one is by using weighted pseudo-inverse of Jacobian. The former is optimal in the sense of energy and the latter is optimal in the sense of manipulability. For sealing paths inside of a car body, we must consider collision avoidance so we propose a performance index for that purpose and a method for optimizing that performance index. We show by simulation that the proposed method can avoid collision with faithfully following the given end effector path.