• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.135-142
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• 2023

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors have been most widely used in terrestrial robotic applications because they can provide dense and precise measurements of the surrounding environments. However, the reliability of LiDAR measurements can considerably vary due to the different reflectivities of laser beams to the reflecting surface materials. This study presents a robust LiDAR-based mapping method for the varying laser reflectivities in indoor environments using the framework of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The proposed method can minimize the performance degradations in the SLAM accuracy by checking and discarding potentially unreliable LiDAR measurements in the SLAM front-end process. The gaps in point-cloud maps created by the proposed approach are filled by a Gaussian process regression method. Experimental results with a mobile robot platform in an indoor environment are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2022.04a
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• pp.103-104
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• 2022

Cracks may occur in reinforced concrete (RC) structures due to various physical and chemical factors, and the growth of cracks causes deterioration of the structure's performance. It is important to prevent the expansion of cracks through periodic diagnosis of cracks in structures. In order to enable free crack exploration even in a narrow space, a construction robot using a Mecanum wheel that can move up, down, left and right and rotate in place was designed. High-quality crack images were periodically collected through the camera, and the image fragments stored during the exploration were combined into a single photo after the exploration was completed. The robot detected cracks with a width of 0.2 mm or more on the concrete probe surface with an accuracy of about 90% or more.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.30 no.4 s.247
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• pp.364-372
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• 2006

In this paper, we present a finger tip tactile sensor which can detect contact normal force as well as slip. The sensor is made up of two different materials, such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) known as piezoelectric polymer, and pressure variable resistor ink. In order to detect slip on the surface of the object, two PVDF strips are arranged along the normal direction in the robot finger tip and the thumb tip. The surface electrode of the PVDF strip is fabricated using silk-screening technique with silver paste. Also a thin flexible force sensor is fabricated in the form of a matrix using pressure variable resistor ink in order to sense the static force. The developed tactile sensor is physically flexible and it can be deformed three-dimensionally to any shape so that it can be placed on anywhere on the curved surface. In addition, a tactile sensing system is developed, which includes miniaturized charge amplifier to amplify the small signal from the sensor, and the fast signal processing unit. The sensor system is evaluated experimentally and its effectiveness is validated.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.1808-1813
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• 2005

In this paper, we present the finger tip tactile sensor which can detect contact normal force as well as slip. The developed sensor is made of two different materials, such as polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF) that is known as piezoelectric polymer and pressure variable resistor ink. In order to detect slip to surface of object, a PVDF strip is arranged along the normal direction in the robot finger tip and the thumb tip. The surface electrode of the PVDF strip is fabricated using silk-screening technique with silver paste. Also a thin flexible force sensor is fabricated in the form of a matrix using pressure variable resistor ink in order to sense the static force. The developed tactile sensor is physically flexible and it can be deformed three-dimensionally to any shape so that it can be placed on anywhere on the curved surface. In addition, we developed a tactile sensing system by miniaturizing the charge amplifier, in order to amplify the small signal from the sensor, and the fast signal processing unit. The sensor system is evaluated experimentally and its effectiveness is validated.

• Transactions on Control, Automation and Systems Engineering
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.49-55
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• 2002

A decrease in the birthrate and aging are progressing in Japan and several countries. In that society, it is important that physically weak persons such as elderly persons are able to take care of themselves. We have been developing exoskeletal robots for human (especially for physically weak persons) motion support. In this study, the controller controls the angular position and impedance of the exoskeltal robot system using multiple fuzzy-neuro controllers based on biological signals that reflect the human subject's intention. Skin surface electromyogram (EMG) signals and the generated wrist force by the human subject during the elbow motion have been used as input information of the controller. Since the activation level of working muscles tends to vary in accordance with the flexion angle of elbow, multiple fuzzy-neuro controllers are applied in the proposed method. The multiple fuzzy-neuro controllers are moderately switched in accordance with the elbow flexion angle. Because of the adaptation ability of the fuzzy-neuro controllers, the exoskeletal robot is flexible enough to deal with biological signal such as EMG. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers Conference
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• 1997.04a
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• pp.131-136
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• 1997

This paper represent the variable structure adaptive mode control technique which is new approach to implement the robust control of industrial robot manipulator with external disturbances and parameter uncertainties. Sliding mode control is a well-known technique for robust control of uncertain nonlinear systems. The robustness of sliding model controllers can be shown in contiuous time, but digital implementation may not preserve robustness properties because the sampling process limits the existence of a true sliding mode. the sampling process often forces the trajectory to oscillate in the neighborhood of the sliding surface. Adaptive control technique is particularly well-suited to robot manipulators where dynamic model is highly complex and may contain unknown parameters. Adaptive control algorithm is designed by using the principle of the model reference adaptive control method based upon the hyperstability theory. The proposed control scheme has a simple sturcture is computationally fast and does not require knowledge of the complex dynamic model or the parameter values of the manipulator or the payload. Simulation results show that the proposed method not only improves the performance of the system but also reduces the chattering problem of sliding mode control, Consequently, it is expected that the new adaptive sliding mode control algorithm will be suited for various practical applications of industrial robot control system.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.1779-1785
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• 2006

This paper presents a method of virtual robot arm control by EMG pattern recognition using the proposed hybrid system. The proposed hybrid system is composed of the LVQ and the SOFM, and the SOFM is used for the preprocessing of the LVQ. The SOFM converts the high dimensional EMG signals to 2-dimensional data. The EMG measurement system uses three surface electrodes to acquire the EMG signal from operator. Six hand gestures can be classified sufficiently by the proposed hybrid system. Experimental results are presented that show the effectiveness of the virtual robot arm control by the proposed hybrid system based classifier for the recognition of hand gestures from EMG signal patterns.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.107-114
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• 2020

In robotic harvesting, a gripper to manipulate the fruits needs to be attached to the robot system. We proposed a flexible robot gripper that can actively respond to the shape of an object such as fruits in the previous work. However, we found that there is a possibility of not being reliably gripped when the object slides during contact with a finger. In this paper, the improved gripper design is proposed to fundamentally solve the problems of the previous gripper. The position of the finger and the maximum closed position are changed, and the design improvement is performed to increase the grip stability by changing the installation angle of the link portion of the finger. Based on the improved design, a modified gripper is fabricated by 3-D printing, and then gripping experiments are performed on spherical object and fruit model object. It is shown that the gripper can stably grip the objects without excessive bending of the finger link of the gripper. The contact pressure between the finger and the surface of the object is measured, and it is verified that it is a sufficiently small pressure that does not cause damage to the fruit. Therefore, the proposed gripper is expected to be successfully applied in harvesting.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.521-525
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• 2011

Lane marking detection is one of important issues in the field of autonomous mobile robot. Especially, in urban environment, like pavement roads of downtown or tour tracks of Science Park, which have continuous patterns on the surface of the road, the lane marking detection becomes more important ability. Although there were many researches about lane detection and lane tracing, many of them used vision sensors mainly to detect lane marking. In this paper, we obtain 2 dimensional library data of 'Intensity' and 'Distance' using one laser rangefinder only. We design a simple classifier and filtering algorithm for the lane detection which uses only one LRF (Laser Range Finder). Allowing extended usage of LRF, this research provides more functionality not only in range finding but also in lane detecting to mobile robots. This work will be technically helpful for robot developers to design more simple and efficient autonomous driving system using LRF.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.594-599
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• 2006

In this paper an anthropomorphic robot hand called SKKU Hand IIl is presented, which has a miniaturized fingertip tactile sensor. The thumb is designed as one part of the palm and multiplies the mobility of the palm. The fingertip tactile sensor, based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and pressure variable resistor ink, is physically flexible enough to be deformed into any three-dimensional geometry. In order to detect incipient slip, a PVDF strip is arranged along the direction normal to the surface of the finger of the robot hand. Also, a thin flexible sensor to sense the static force as well as the contact location is fabricated into an arrayed type using pressure variable resistor ink. The driving circuits and the tactile sensing systems for the SKKU Hand II are embedded in the hand. Each driving circuit communicates with others using CAN protocol. SKKU Hand II is manufactured and its feasibility is validated through preliminary experiments.