• Asian Journal of Business Environment
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.23-29
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• 2013

Purpose - The study investigates the obstacles faced by small business owners (SBOs) in accessing finance in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality. The study aims to identify the causes of inaccessibility to finance for SBOs, investigate the role of government agencies in supporting SBOs, assess the extent to which banks support SMMEs, and suggest solutions to ease the challenge of inaccessibility of finance. Research design, data, methodology -We used a triangulation research design, wherein SMME owners and managers in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality were the target population. We used simple random sampling techniques to select respondents, and conducted in-depth interviews to collect qualitative data. Results - We analyzed quantitative data using descriptive statistics, Chi-square tests, and factor analysis. The qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis. The study identifies and discusses the obstacles in accessing finance; the main among which are the lack of collateral security, poor business plans, lack of knowledge, and lack of financial deposit. Conclusions -We urge the banks, government, and government agencies to support the SMME sector, for it remains the economic engine of many African countries and helps in reducing the impact of socio-economic challenges, like unemployment and poverty.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.65-71
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• 2018

In order to make the underwater vehicle carry out the mission in a submarine environment, it is needed to plan a safe and efficient route to a given destination and prevent the autonomous submersible from colliding with obstacles while moving along the planned route. The function of collision avoidance makes the travel distance of the autonomous submersible longer. Moreover, it should move slowly near to obstacles against their moving disturbance. As a result, this invokes the degradation of the navigation efficiency in the process of collision avoidance. The side effect of the collision avoidance is not ignorable in the case of high congested environments such as the coast with many obstacles. In this paper, we suggest a path planning method which provides the route with minimum travel time considering collision avoidance in congested environment. For the purpose, we define environmental congestion map related to geometric information and obstacles. And we propose a method to consider the moving cost in the RRT scheme that provides the existing minimum distance path. We verified that the efficiency of our algorithm with simulation experiments.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.500-507
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• 2022

In this study, a motion planning method based on the integer representation of contact status between wheels and the ground is proposed for planning swing motion of a 6×6 wheel-legged robot to cross large obstacles and gaps. Wheel-legged robots can drive on a flat road by wheels and overcome large obstacles by legs. Autonomously crossing large obstacles requires the robot to perform complex motion planning of multi-contacts and wheel-rolling at the same time. The lift-off and touch-down status of wheels and the trajectories of legs should be carefully planned to avoid collision between the robot body and the obstacle. To address this issue, we propose a planning method for swing motion of robot legs. It combines an integer representation of discrete contact status and a trajectory optimization based on the direct collocation method, which results in a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem. The planned motion is used to control the joint angles of the articulated legs. The proposed method is verified by the MuJoCo simulation and shows that over 95% and 83% success rate when the height of vertical obstacles and the length of gaps are equal to or less than 1.68 times of the wheel radius and 1.44 times of the wheel diameter, respectively.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.305-314
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• 2015

The work presented in this paper deals with a navigation problem for multiple mobile robot system in unknown indoor environments. The environment is completely unknown for all the robots and the surrounding information should be detected by the proximity sensors installed on the robots' bodies. In order to guide all the robots to move along collision-free paths and reach the goal positions, a navigation method based on the combination of a set of primary strategies has been developed. The indoor environments usually contain convex and concave obstacles. In this work, a danger judgment strategy in accordance with the sensors' data is used for avoiding small convex obstacles or moving objects which include both dynamic obstacles and other robots. For big convex obstacles or concave ones, a wall following strategy is designed for dealing with these special situations. In this paper, a state memorizing strategy is also proposed for the "infinite repetition" or "dead cycle" situations. Finally, when there is no collision risk, the robots will be guided towards the targets according to a target positioning strategy. Most of these strategies are achieved by the means of fuzzy logic controllers and uniformly applied for every robot. The simulation experiments verified that the proposed method has a positive effectiveness for the navigation problem.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.12
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• pp.1122-1131
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• 2012

This paper presents obstacle avoidance method for scout robot or industrial robot in unknown environment by using IR sensor and vision system. In the proposed method, robots share the information where the obstacles are located in real-time, thus the robots can choose the best path for obstacle avoidance. Using IR sensor and vision system, multiple robots efficiently evade the obstacles by the proposed cooperation method. No landmark is used at wall or floor in experiment environment. The obstacles don't have specific color or shape. To get the information of the obstacle, vision system extracts the obstacle coordinate by using an image labeling method. The information obtained by IR sensor is about the obstacle range and the locomotion direction to decide the optimal path for avoiding obstacle. The experiment was conducted in $7m{\times}7m$ indoor environment with two-wheeled mobile robots. It is shown that multiple robots efficiently move along the optimal path in cooperation with each other in the space where obstacles are located.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.141-147
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• 2008

In this paper, we present one approach to achieve safe navigation in indoor dynamic environment. So far, there have been various useful collision avoidance algorithms and path planning schemes. However, those algorithms have a fundamental limitation that the robot can avoid only "visible" obstacles. In real environment, it is not possible to detect all the dynamic obstacles around the robot. There exist a lot of "occluded" regions due to the limitation of field of view. In order to avoid possible collisions, it is desirable to consider visibility information. Then, a robot can reduce the speed or modify a path. This paper proposes a safe navigation scheme to reduce the risk of collision due to unexpected dynamic obstacles. The robot's motion is controlled according to a hybrid control scheme. The possibility of collision is dually reflected to a path planning and a speed control. The proposed scheme clearly indicates the structural procedure on how to model and to exploit the risk of navigation. The proposed scheme is experimentally tested in a real office building. The presented result shows that the robot moves along the safe path to obtain sufficient field of view, while appropriate speed control is carried out.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.237-252
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• 2013

The philosophy of science of Bachelard is introduced mainly with epistemological obstacles in the discussions within mathematics education. In his philosophy, epistemological obstacles are connected with the dialectical developments of science. Science progresses through generalization of concepts and theories by negating things which were recognized as obvious. These processes start with ruptures against the existing knowledge. Epistemological obstacles are failure in keeping distance with the existing knowledge when reorganization is needed. This concept means that there are the inherent difficulties in the processes of concept formation. Finally I compare the view of Bachelard on the developments of science and the 'interiorization-condensation-objectification' scheme of reflexive abstraction in mathematics education and discuss the inherent difficulties in the learning mathematics.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.934-939
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• 2012

This paper proposes a new algorithm for ultrasonic sensors arranged on ring frame to identify obstacles surrounding itself by TOFs (time of flight). The ring frame has multiple channels consisting of a transmitter and a receiver. When the transmitter of a selected channel transmits ultrasonic signal, the TOFs of reflected signals from obstacles are acquired by the receiver of the channel. The process continues for all channels consecutively. Then, by using parabolic curve fitting of TOFs of all channel, the proposed algorithm not only calculates distances from multiple obstacles, but also identifies if the shape of obstacles are point or plane by the coefficients of the curve. By the experiment using 16 ultrasonic transceivers on the ring frame in the environment of two poles and two planes, we show the feasibility of the proposed scheme.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.57-69
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• 2000

A moving window technique for detecting a lane and obstacles using the Images captured by a CCD camera attached in an automobile, is proposed in this paper To process the dynamic images in real time, there could be many constraints on the hardware To overcome these hardware constraints and to detect the lane and obstacles in real time, the optimal size of window IS determined based upon road conditions and automobile states. By utilizing the sub-Images inside the windows, detection of the lane and obstacles become possible m real time. For each Image frame, the moving windows are re-determined following the predicted directions based on Kalman filtering theory to Improve detection accuracy, as well as efficiency The feasibility of proposed algorithm IS demonstrated through the simulated experiments of highway driving.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.89-106
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• 2020

Purpose: This study attempts to improve the status of emergency care for major trauma patients transferred by 119 paramedics by analyzing the status of emergency care and the obstacles to the spinal motion restriction (SMR) for major trauma patients. Methods: A total of 600 rescue logs were collected from major trauma patients transported by 119 paramedics in the C fire department from Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2017. And then, 280 questionnaires were collected from the 119 paramedics in C fire department from May 3 to Jun. 3, 2019. Data were analyzed using SPSS 24.0 version. Results: Among 499 spinal motion restriction adaptive patients, the spinal motion restriction rate was 51.1% (255 individuals). Lack of human resources and quality control problems were among the obstacles to spinal motion restriction. Conclusion: The 119 paramedics should improve their activeness and skills in performing emergency care, and since training and experience are of crucial importance, they should expand various education systematized according to demand.