• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.13-22
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• 2008

For the accuracy correction of the micro-positioning industrial robot, micro-manipulator has been devised. The compliant mechanisms using piezoelectric actuators is necessary geometrically and structurally to be developed by the optimization approaches. The overall geometric advantage as the mechanical efficiencies of the mechanism are considered as objective functions, which respectively art the ratio of output displacement to input force, and their constraints are the vertical notion of supporting leg and the structural strength of manipulation. In optimizing the compliant mechanical amplifier, the sequential linear programming and an optimality criteria method are used for the geometrical dimensions of compliant bridges and flexure hinges. This paper presents the integrated design process which not only can maximize the mechanism feasibilities but also can ensure the positioning accuracy and sufficient workspace. Experiment and simulation are presented for validating the design process through the comparisons of the kinematical and structural performances.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.503-509
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• 2015

In this paper, we designed and tested an ankle joint mechanism for a gait rehabilitation robot. Gait rehabilitation programs are designed to improve the natural leg motion of patients who have lost their walking capabilities by accident or disease. Strengthening the muscles of the lower-limbs and stimulation of the nervous system corresponding to walking helps patients to walk again using gait assistive devices. It is an obvious requirement that the rehabilitation system's motion should be similar to and as natural as the normal gait. However, the system being used for gait rehabilitation does not pay much attention to ankle joints, which play an important role in correct walking as the motion of the ankle should reflect the movement of the center of gravity (COG) of the body. Consequently, we have designed an ankle mechanism that ensures the safety of the patient as well as efficient gait training. Also, even patients with low leg muscle strength are able to operate the ankle joint due to the direct-drive mechanism without a reducer. This safety feature prevents any possible adverse load on the human ankle. The additional degree of freedom for the roll motion achieves a gait pattern which is similar to the normal gait and with a greater degree of comfort.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.41-51
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• 2020

This paper presents the development of a robotic system for rehabilitation of the trunk's ability to maintain postural control under different balance conditions. The system, developed with extensive input from rehabilitation and biomedical engineering experts, consists of a seat mounted on a robotic mechanism capable of moving it with four degrees of freedom (3 rotational and 1 translational). The seat surface has built in instrumentation to gauge the movements of the user's center of pressure (COP) and it can be moved either to track the movements of the COP or according to operator given commands. The system allows two types of leg support. A ground mounted footrest allows participation of legs in postural control while a seat connected footrest constrains the leg movement and limits their involvement in postural control. The design evolution over several prototypes is presented and computer aided structural analysis is used to determine the feasibility of the designed components. The system is pilot tested by a stroke patient and is determined to have potential for use as a trunk rehabilitation tool. Future works involve more detailed studies to evaluate the effects of using this system and to determine its efficacy as a rehabilitation tool.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.346-353
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to verify the energy efficiency of the integrated system combining human and a lower extremity exoskeleton robot when it is applied to the proposed gait pattern. Energy efficient gait pattern of the lower limb was proposed through leg function distribution during stance phase and the dynamic-manipulability ellipsoid (DME). To verify the feasibility and effect of the redefined gait trajectory, simulations and experiments were conducted under the conditions of walking on level ground and ascending and descending from a staircase. Experiments to calculate the metabolic cost of the human body with or without the assistance of the exoskeleton were conducted. The energy consumption of the lower extremity exoskeleton was assessed, with the aim of improving the efficiency of the integrated system.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.51-59
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• 2011

This paper is concerned with locomotion of dog-like quadruped robots that can adapt to various terrains, mainly dealing with implementation methods and characteristics of static and dynamic gaits. To this end, a 12-DOF robot is built in house, motional trajectories of its body and feet are generated mimicking biological life, and the corresponding leg joint angles are analytically obtained by inverse kinematics. Such joint angle data are then applied to the robot's ADAMS model for computer simulations so that the planned walk and trot gaits are both confirmed dynamically stable. However, contrary to the simulation results, previous trot patterns showed unstable behavior during experiments. This problem led us to analyze the reason, and in the course we discovered the importance of maximally utilizing the concept of WSM rather than ZMP and therefore reducing the gait period to secure the stability of dynamic gaits such as trot.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.32-38
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• 2013

Small mobile robots which use round wheels are suitable for driving on a flat surface, but it cannot climb the obstacle whose height is greater than the radius of wheels. As an alternative, legged-wheels have been proposed by many researchers due to its better climbing performance. However, driving and climbing performances have a trade-off relationship so that their driving performance should be sacrificed. In this study, in order to achieve both driving and climbing performances, a new transformable wheel was developed. The developed transformable wheel can have a round shape on a flat surface and change its shape into legged-wheel when it makes a contact with an obstacle. For design of the transformable wheel, the performance of legged-wheel was analyzed with respect to the number and curvature of the leg, and then the new transformable wheel was designed based on the analysis. Contrary to the existing transformable wheels that contain additional actuators for the transformation, the developed transformable wheel can be unfolded without any additional actuator. In this study, in order to validate the transformable wheel, a simple robot platform was fabricated. Consequently, it climbed the obstacle whose height is 2.6 times greater than the wheel radius.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.633-647
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• 2012

Applying Information Technology (IT) in practical engineering has become one of the most important issues in the past few decades, especially on internal solitary wave, intelligent robot interaction, artificial intelligence, fuzzy Lyapunov, tension leg platform (TLP), consumer and service quality. Other than affecting the traditional teaching mode or increasing the inter-relation with users, IT can also be connected with the current society by collecting the latest information from the internet. It is apparently a fashion-catching-up technology. Therefore, the learning of how to use IT facilities is becoming one of engineers' skills nowadays. In addition to studying how well engineers learn to operate IT facilities and apply them into teaching, how engineers' general capacity of information effects the results of learning IT are also discussed. This research introduces the "Combined TAM and TPB mode," to understand the situation of engineers using IT facilities.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.2148-2153
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• 2005

For a legged robot such as a humanoid, balancing its body during a given motion is natural but the most important problem. Recently, a motion given to a humanoid is more and more complicated, and thus the balancing problem becomes much more critical. This paper suggests a real-time motion generation algorithm that guarantees a humanoid to be balanced during the motion. A desired motion of each arm and/or leg is planned by the conventional motion planning method without considering the balancing problem. In order to balance a humanoid, all the given motions are embedded into the COG Jacobian. The COG Jacobian is modified to include the desired motions and, in consequence, dimension of the COG Jacobian is drastically reduced. With the motion-embedded COG Jacobian, balancing and performing a task is completed simultaneously, without changing any other parameters related to the control or planning. Validity and efficiency of the proposed motion-embedded COG Jacobian is simulated in the paper.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.147-162
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• 1997

When designing workplaces or arranging controls on panel, devices and controls should be placed within the reach of operator's arm or foot to guarantee effective performances. Most of the existing research on the reach volume were based on measurements of a few subject's arm reach, and limited to Caucasian and Chinese populations. Furthermore, reach volume considering foot or trunk motion have not been investigated. Range of human joint motion and that of two degrees of freedom motion are needed to generate reach volume analytically using the sweeping algorithm. However, range of two degrees of freedom motion has not been measured up to now. Therefore, range of two degrees of freedom motion was measured in this research, where 47 college students were participated voluntarily as subjects. The results showed that the motion of one joint can be limited by the motion of another motion, that is to say, the shoulder flexion was decreased significantly when the shoulder was adducted or abducted. Second, new approximate algorithms generating reach volumes were suggested, in which range of two degrees of freedom motion was used as input data. Depending upon the body segment included such as trunk, arm and leg, three types of reach volume were provided, in which the human body was modeled as a multilink system based on the robot kinematics and the sweeping method was employed. Reach volume generated analytically in this study showed statistically reasonable results when compared with that obtained from direct measurement.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.243-252
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• 2008

It has been reported that long-term exercise on a treadmill (running machine) may cause injury to the joints in a human's lower extremities. Previous works related to analysis of human walking motion are, however, mostly based on clinical statistics and experimental methodology. This paper proposes an analytical methodology. Specifically, this work deals with a comparison of normal walking on the ground and walking on a treadmill in regard to the external and internal impulses exerted on the joints of a human's lower extremities. First, a modeling procedure of impulses, impulse geometry, and impulse measure for the human lower extremity model will be briefly introduced and a new impulse measure for analysis of internal impulse is developed. Based on these analytical tools, we analyze the external and internal impulses through a planar 7-linked human lower extremity model. It is shown through simulation that the human walking on a treadmill exhibits greater internal impulses on the knee and ankle joints of the supporting leg when compared to that on the ground. In order to corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, a force platform was developed to measure the external impulses exerted on the ground for the cases of the normal walking and walking on the treadmill. It is shown that the experimental results correspond well to the simulation results.