• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 2007.04a
• /
• pp.68-73
• /
• 2007

Civil engineering construction work has always been accompanied by a high proportion of tasks that are either dangerous or unpleasant or both. Enhancing the general working environment and boosting safety levels are critical issues for the industry. In addition to that, the industry has been slow to utilize automation & robot technology, and there is substantial scope for the use of technology th boost efficiency, cut costs and improve quality levels in construction. In a bid to address this issue, Ministry of Construction & Transportation launched a five-year project in 2003 entitled Development of Intelligent Excavating System. The aim of the project is to use telecommunications and robotics technology to minimize inefficiencies and eliminate the dangerous and unpleasant aspects of tile construction process through the development of specific applications such as IT-equipped construction machinery and advanced construction management systems. In this paper, the project introduces on the research and development content related to multi-disciplinary, a intuitive operator control unit(Robot Technology) included.

• Transactions on Control, Automation and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.1-9
• /
• 2001

The promise of improved productivity and quality has lead to numerous research investigations in machining process monitoring and control. Recent studies have demonstrated that careful attention must be paid to the regulation of multiple process modules within a single operation such that each module performs its function properly and adverse interactions between modules do not occur. This had lead to the development of supervisory control; particularly to the development of methodologies to systemati-cally construct and implement these controllers. However, no research study has investigated the effect of the production environ-ment on the design of supervisor controllers. In this paper, the design of supervisory controllers for various production environ-ment is studied. The design approach given in Landers and Ulsoy(1998) is applied to construct two supervisory machining control-lers that are experimentally implemented in a face milling operation. Comparisons with an experimental implementation without process control illustrate the benefits of utilizing process controllers that are coordinated properly. The results also show that the given design approach may be used to construct supervisory controllers for different types of production environments.

• Advances in robotics research
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.201-217
• /
• 2018

Agriculture production is a critical human intensive task, which takes place in all regions of the world. The process to grow and harvest crops is labor intensive in many countries due to the lack of automation and advanced technology. Much of the difficult, dangerous and dirty labor of crop production can be automated with intelligent and robotic platforms. We propose an intelligent, agent-oriented robotic team, which can enable the process of harvesting, gathering and collecting crops and fruits, of many types, from agricultural fields. This paper describes a novel robotic organization enabling humans, robots and agents to work together for automation of gathering and collection functions. The focus of the research is a model, called HARMS, which can enable Humans, software Agents, Robots, Machines and Sensors to work together indistinguishably. With this model, any capability-based human-like organization can be conceived and modeled, such as in manufacturing or agriculture. In this research, we model, design and implement a technology application of knowledge-based robot-to-robot and human-to-robot collaboration for an agricultural gathering and collection function. The gathering and collection functions were chosen as they are some of the most labor intensive and least automated processes in the process acquisition of agricultural products. The use of robotic organizations can reduce human labor and increase efficiency allowing people to focus on higher level tasks and minimizing the backbreaking tasks of agricultural production in the future. In this work, the HARMS model was applied to three different robotic instances and an integrated test was completed with satisfactory results that show the basic promise of this research.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.8 no.8
• /
• pp.625-632
• /
• 2002

We propose an outsole measurement/inspection system to improve the quality of the shoe product. It uses the Divide-and-Conquer technique to measure the length of shoes'outsole. First, it detects edge positions of outsole's toe and heel from each image frame using an unique scale block we defined and calculates the outsole's length as the distance of two edge positions. Then it compensates the total length of outsole using the side image of outsole. Next, it classifies the outsole as inferior goods if the measurement error is bigger than 5.8mm. As a result of testing with the various kinds of outsoles, it was shown that the 95% accuracy was acquired within 1mm allowable error range. In conclusion, the proposed inspection system is effective and useful in the measurement/inspection process of shoe product and any material object as well.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.20 no.7
• /
• pp.782-787
• /
• 2014

Due to the complicated steel structure and safety concern, it is very difficult to deploy wireless networks in power plants. This paper presents a hybrid network, named as $P^2HYMN$ (Power Plant HYbrid Maintenance Network), encompassing PLC (Power Line Communication), TLC (Telephone Line Communication), and Wireless LAN. The design goal of $P^2HYMN$ is to integrate multimedia data such as design drawings of control equipment, process data, and video image data for maintenance operation in electric power plants. A Multiplex Line Communication (MLC) device was designed and implemented to integrate PLC, TLC, and Wireless LAN into $P^2HYMN$. Performance test of $P^2HYMN$ has been conducted on a testbed under various conditions. The throughput of TLC was shown as 39 Mbps. Because the bandwidth requirement per camera is 8.5 Mbps on average, TLC is expected to support more thant four video camera at the same time.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.9 no.12
• /
• pp.1042-1047
• /
• 2003

The goal of this research is to implement a PC-based remote control system of ion implanter using Visual Basic programming. Presently, skilled process engineers are required to regularly setup and adjust implanter parameters. Any reduction in the number of production hours devoted to ion beam implanter setup or recalibration after a species change would represent substantial improvements in both manpower and equipment utilization. An optical communication system for the remote control and telemetry in the operation of the 50kev potential was designed and constructed. This system enables continuous and safe operation of the ion implanter and can be the basis for the automation. The isolation characteristics of optical fiber were 10kV/cm, and performance tests of the system under the intense noise environment during the implanter operations showed satisfactory results. This system is designed to completely replace the existing human-machine interface with many new functions. This paper describes the important components of the system including system architecture and software development. It is expected that this system can be used for the communication and control purpose in the high noise environments such as the operation of the MeV energy implanter or other high power, high noise systems.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.608-614
• /
• 2008

This paper describes a location tracking system to guide landing process of an Unmanned Helicopter(UMH) exploiting MIT Cricket nodes. For automatic landing of a UMH, a precise positioning system is indispensable. However, GPS(Global Positioning System) is inadequate for tracking the three dimensional position of a UMH because of large positioning errors. The Cricket systems use Time-Difference-of-Arrival(TDoA) method with ultrasonic and RF(Radio Frequency) signals to measure distances. They operate in passive mode in that a listener attached to a moving device receives distance signals from several beacons located at fixed points on ground. Inevitably, this passive type of implementation causes large disturbances in measuring distances between beacons and the listener due to wind blow from propeller and turbulence of UMH body. To cope with this problem, we proposed active type of implementation for positioning a UMH. In this implementation, a beacon is set up at UMH body and four listeners are located at ground area at least where the UMH will land. A pair of Ultrasonic and RF signals from the beacon arrives at several listeners to calculate the position of the UMH. The distance signals among listeners are synchronized with a counter value appended to each distance signals from the beacon.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.3 no.6
• /
• pp.639-643
• /
• 1997

This paper presents how nonlinear PID control algorithms can be applied on chemical processes for a more stable operation and perfect automation. A pass balance controller is designed to balance the exiting temperatures of a heater and a heat exchange network. The proposed controller has gain-varying integral action and deals with the operational constraints in an efficient manner. Also, the use of a PID gap controller is proposed to maximize energy saving and operation stability and to minimize operator intervention in operation of air fan coolers. The proposed controller adjusts the opening of a louver automatically in such a way that it keeps the air fan pitch position within the desired range. All these nonlinear PID controllers have been implemented on the distributed control system (DCS) for good reliability and operability. Operator acceptance was very high and the implemented controllers have shown good performance and high service factor still now on. The proposed methodology can be directly applied to similar processes without any modification.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.2164-2168
• /
• 2003

Real time control system such as in factory automation fields, defense field, aerospace, railway industries, financial trading and so forth, includes multiple computers on multiple nodes, and share data to process various actions and functions. This is similar to multitasking in a multiprocessor computer system. The task processing efficiency of such system is proportionally increased by process speed of each process computer. And also it is greatly influenced by communication latencies of each node. To provide proper operation of such real time system, a network that can guarantee deterministic exchange of certain amount of data within a limited time is required. Such network is called as a real time network. As for modern distributed control system, the timeliness of data exchange gives important factor for the dynamics of entire control system. In a real time network system, exchanged data are determined by off-line design process to provide the timeliness of data. In other word, designer of network makes up a network data table that describes the specification of data exchanged between control equipments. And by this off-line design result, the network data are exchanged by predetermined schedule. First, this paper explains international standard real time network TCN (Train Communication Network) applied to the KHST (Korean High Speed Train) project. And then it explains the computer program developed for design tool of network data table of TCN.

• Transactions on Control, Automation and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.2 no.4
• /
• pp.268-273
• /
• 2000

Plasma models are crucial to equipment design and process optimization. A radial basis function network(RBFN) in con-junction with statistical experimental design has been used to model a process plasma. A 2$^4$ full factorial experiment was employed to characterized a hemispherical inductively coupled plasma(HICP) in characterizing HICP, the factors that were varied in the design include source power, pressure, position of shuck holder, and Cl$_2$ flow rate. Using a Langmuir probe, plasma attributes were collected, which include typical electron density, electron temperature. and plasma potential as well as their spatial uniformity. Root mean-squared prediction errors of RBEN are 0.409(10(sup)12/㎤), 0.277(eV), and 0.699(V), for electron density, electron temperature, and Plasma potential, respectively. For spatial uniformity data, they are 2.623(10(sup)12/㎤), 5.704(eV) and 3.481(V), for electron density, electron temperature, and plasma potential, respectively. Comparisons with generalized regression neural network(GRNN) revealed an improved prediction accuracy of RBFN as well as a comparable performance between GRNN and statistical response surface model. Both RBEN and GRNN, however, experienced difficulties in generalizing training data with smaller standard deviation.