• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.94-102
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• 2021

This study addresses a method for 3D reconstruction using acoustic data with heterogeneous sonar devices: Forward-Looking Multibeam Sonar (FLMS) and Profiling Sonar (PS). The challenges in sonar image processing are perceptual ambiguity, the loss of elevation information, and low signal to noise ratio, which are caused by the ranging and intensity-based image generation mechanism of sonars. The conventional approaches utilize additional constraints such as Lambertian reflection and redundant data at various positions, but they are vulnerable to environmental conditions. Our approach is to use two sonars that have a complementary data type. Typically, the sonars provide reliable information in the horizontal but, the loss of elevation information degrades the quality of data in the vertical. To overcome the characteristic of sonar devices, we adopt the crossed installation in such a way that the PS is laid down on its side and mounted on the top of FLMS. From the installation, FLMS scans horizontal information and PS obtains a vertical profile of the front area of AUV. For the fusion of the two sonar data, we propose the probabilistic approach. A likelihood map using geometric constraints between two sonar devices is built and a monte-carlo experiment using a derived model is conducted to extract 3D points. To verify the proposed method, we conducted a simulation and field test. As a result, a consistent seabed map was obtained. This method can be utilized for 3D seabed mapping with an AUV.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.423-423
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• 2000

This paper proposes an effective algorithm for following a wall by an autonomous mobile robot with sonar sensors and infrared sensors in an indoor environment. The proposed method uses deadreckoning to estimate the current position and orientation of a mobile robot. Sonar sensor data are used to estimate shape and position of wall using proposed algorithm. Infrared sensor data are used as assistant when sonar sensor data is uncertain. Simulation results using mobile robot show that the proposed algorithm is proper for the following wall.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.227-233
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• 2016

This paper presents an underwater structure 3D reconstruction method using a 2D multibeam imaging sonar. Compared with other underwater environmental recognition sensors, the 2D multibeam imaging sonar offers high resolution images in water with a high turbidity level by showing the reflection intensity data in real-time. With such advantages, almost all underwater applications, including ROVs, have applied this 2D multibeam imaging sonar. However, the elevation data are missing in sonar images, which causes difficulties with correctly understanding the underwater topography. To solve this problem, this paper concentrates on the physical relationship between the sonar image and the scene topography to find the elevation information. First, the modeling of the sonar reflection intensity data is studied using the distances and angles of the sonar beams and underwater objects. Second, the elevation data are determined based on parameters like the reflection intensity and shadow length. Then, the elevation information is applied to the 3D underwater reconstruction. This paper evaluates the presented real-time 3D reconstruction method using real underwater environments. Experimental results are shown to appraise the performance of the method. Additionally, with the utilization of ROVs, the contour and texture image mapping results from the obtained 3D reconstruction results are presented as applications.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.91.3-91
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• 2001

A sensor fusion scheme for mobile robot environment recognition that incorporates range data and contour data is proposed. Ultrasonic sensor provides coarse spatial description but guarantees open space with no obstacle within sonic cone with relatively high belief. Laser structured light system provides detailed contour description of environment but prone to light noise and is easily affected by surface reflectivity. Overall fusion process is composed of two stages: Noise elimination and belief updates. Dempster Shafer´s evidential reasoning is applied at each stage. Open space estimation from sonar range measurements brings elimination of noisy lines from laser sensor. Comparing actual sonar data to the simulated sonar data enables ...

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.35-42
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• 2008

This study introduces a robust feature detector for sonar data from a general fixed-type of sonar ring. The detector is composed of a data association filter and a feature extractor. The data association filter removes false returns provided frequently from sonar sensors, and classifies set of data from various objects and robot positions into a group in which all the data are from the same object. The feature extractor calculates the geometries of the feature for the group. We show the possibility of extracting circle feature as well as a line and a point features. The proposed method was applied to a real home environment with a real robot.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.217-224
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• 2001

In this paper, the relocation of a mobile robot is considered such that it enables the robot to determine its position with respect to a global reference frame without any $\alpha$ priori position information. The robot acquires sonar range data from a two-dimensional model composed of planes, corners, edges, and cylinders. Considering individual range as data features, the robot searches the best position where the data features of a position matches the environmental model using a constraint-based search method. To increase the search efficiency, a hypothesize and-verify technique is employed in which the position of the robot is calculated from all possible combinations of two range returns that satisfy the sonar sensing model. Accurate relocation is demonstrated with the results from sets of experiments using sparse sonar data in the presence of unmodeled objects.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.25-35
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• 2006

Improving practicality of SLAM requires various sensors to be fused effectively in order to cope with uncertainty induced from both environment and sensors. In this case, combining sonar and vision sensors possesses numerous advantages of economical efficiency and complementary cooperation. Especially, it can remedy false data association and divergence problem of sonar sensors, and overcome low frequency SLAM update caused by computational burden and weakness in illumination changes of vision sensors. In this paper, we propose a SLAM method to join sonar sensors and stereo camera together. It consists of two schemes, extracting robust point and line features from sonar data and recognizing planar visual objects using multi-scale Harris corner detector and its SIFT descriptor from pre-constructed object database. And fusing sonar features and visual objects through EKF-SLAM can give correct data association via object recognition and high frequency update via sonar features. As a result, it can increase robustness and accuracy of SLAM in indoor environment. The performance of the proposed algorithm was verified by experiments in home -like environment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.1219-1226
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• 2011

This paper proposes a novel approach to building an occupancy grid map using sonar data. It is very important for a mobile robot to recognize and construct its surrounding environments for navigation. However, the grid map constructed by ultrasonic sensors cannot represent a realistic shape of given environments due to incorrect sonar measurements caused by specular reflection. To overcome this problem, we propose an advanced sonar sensor model which consists of distance and shape factors used to determine the reliability of sensor data. Through this sensor model, a robot can build a high-quality grid map. The proposed method was verified by various experiments and showed that the robot could build an accurate map with sonar data in various indoor environments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.05b
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• pp.62-65
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• 2003

When a mobile robot moves around autonomously without man-made corrupted bye landmarks, it is essential to recognize the placement of surrounding objects especially for self localization, obstacle avoidance, and target classification and localization. To recognize the environment we use many Kinds of sensors, such as ultrasonic sensors, laser range finder, CCD camera, and so on. Among the sensors, ultra sonic sensors(sonar)are unexpensive and easy to use. In this paper, we analyze the sonar data and propose a method to recognize features of indoor environment. It is supposed that the environments are consisted of features of planes, edges, and corners, For the analysis, sonar data of plane, edge, and corner are accumulated for several given ranges. The data are filtered to eliminate some noise using the Kalman filter algorithm. Then, the data for each feature are compared each other to extract the character is ties of each feature. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method using the sonar data obtained form a sonar transducer rotating and scanning the range information around a indoor environment.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.1637-1645
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• 2017

Target/Nontarget classification can be divided into the study of shape estimation of the target analysing reflected echo signal and of type classification of the target using acoustical features. In active sonar system, the feature vectors are extracted from the signal reflected from the target, and an classification algorithm is applied to determine whether the received signal is a target or not. However, received sonar signals can be distorted in the underwater environments, and the spatio-temporal characteristics of active sonar signals change according to the aspect of the target. In addition, it is very difficult to collect real sea-trial data for research. In this paper, target/non-target classification were performed using real sea-trial data. Feature vectors are extracted using MFCC(Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients), filterbank energy in the Fourier spectrum and wavelet domain. For the performance verification, classification experiments were performed using backpropagation neural network classifiers.