• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.289-295
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• 2019

Maritime back-up navigation system in port approach requires a horizontal accuracy of 10 meters in IALA (International Association of Lighthouse Authorities) recommendations. eLoran which is a best back-up navigation system that satisfies accuracy requirement has poor navigation performance depending signal environments. Especially, noise caused by multipath and electronic devices around eLoran antenna affects navigation performance. In this paper, Ship based Navigation Back-up system using UAV on Interference is designed to satisfy horizontal accuracy requirement. To improve the eLoran signal environment, UAVs are equipped with camera, IMU sensor and eLoran antenna and receivers. This proposed system is designed to receive eLoran signal through UAV-based receiver and control UAV's position and attitude within Landmark around area. The ship-based positioning using eLoran signal, vision and attitude information received from UAV satisfy resilient and robust navigation requirements.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.351-363
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• 2023

Visual structural inspections are an inseparable part of post-earthquake damage assessments. With unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) establishing a new frontier in visual inspections, there are major computational challenges in processing the collected massive amounts of high-resolution visual data. We propose twin deep learning models that can provide accurate high-resolution structural components and damage segmentation masks efficiently. The traditional approach to cope with high memory computational demands is to either uniformly downsample the raw images at the price of losing fine local details or cropping smaller parts of the images leading to a loss of global contextual information. Therefore, our twin models comprising Trainable Resizing for high-resolution Segmentation Network (TRS-Net) and DmgFormer approaches the global and local semantics from different perspectives. TRS-Net is a compound, high-resolution segmentation architecture equipped with learnable downsampler and upsampler modules to minimize information loss for optimal performance and efficiency. DmgFormer utilizes a transformer backbone and a convolutional decoder head with skip connections on a grid of crops aiming for high precision learning without downsizing. An augmented inference technique is used to boost performance further and reduce the possible loss of context due to grid cropping. Comprehensive experiments have been performed on the 3D physics-based graphics models (PBGMs) synthetic environments in the QuakeCity dataset. The proposed framework is evaluated using several metrics on three segmentation tasks: component type, component damage state, and global damage (crack, rebar, spalling). The models were developed as part of the 2^nd International Competition for Structural Health Monitoring.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.473-480
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• 2023

This study evaluated a novel method of defining the automatic flight path of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for search and rescue missions in a VR environment. The developed VR content reserves miniature digital twins of a building in the fire and a steep mountain terrain site. The users drow the UAV's scanning path using hand gestures on the surface of digital twins, and then the UAV make an automatic flight along the defined path. According to human-in-the-loop simulation tests comparing the novel method with a conventional manual flight task with 19 participants, the novel method did not improve the mission performance but participants felt a lower mental workload. The designer may need to consider the automation support on the vulnerable points of the SAR mission environment while maintaining experts' mapping capability.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.425-443
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• 2024

Floods are among the most common natural hazards in urban areas. To mitigate the problems caused by flooding, unstructured data such as images and videos collected from closed circuit televisions (CCTVs) or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been examined for flood management (FM). Many computer vision (CV) techniques have been widely adopted to analyze imagery data. Although some papers have reviewed recent CV approaches that utilize UAV images or remote sensing data, less effort has been devoted to studies that have focused on CCTV data. In addition, few studies have distinguished between the main research objectives of CV techniques (e.g., flood depth and flooded area) for a comprehensive understanding of the current status and trends of CV applications for each FM research topic. Thus, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature that proposes CV techniques for aspects of FM using ground camera (e.g., CCTV) data. Research topics are classified into four categories: flood depth, flood detection, flooded area, and surface water velocity. These application areas are subdivided into three types: urban, river and stream, and experimental. The adopted CV techniques are summarized for each research topic and application area. The primary goal of this review is to provide guidance for researchers who plan to design a CV model for specific purposes such as flood-depth estimation. Researchers should be able to draw on this review to construct an appropriate CV model for any FM purpose.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.176-189
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• 2024

Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) is a core feature of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are commonly referred to as drones. In emerging smart logistics, drones are expected to play an increasingly important role as mobile platforms. Therefore, research on last-mile delivery using drones is on the rise. There is a growing trend toward providing drone delivery services, particularly among retailers that handle small and lightweight items. However, there is still a lack of research on a structural definition of the VTOL drone flight model for multi-point delivery service. This paper describes a VTOL drone flight route structure for a multi-drone delivery service using rotary-wing type VTOL drones. First, we briefly explore the factors to be considered when providing drone delivery services. Second, a VTOL drone flight route model is introduced using the idea of the nested graph. Based on the proposed model, we describe various time-related attributes for delivery services using drones and present corresponding calculation methods. Additionally, as an application of the drone route model and the time attributes, we comprehensively describe a simple example of the multi-drone delivery for first-come-first-served (FCFS) services.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.34-42
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• 2024

This study developed a morphing technology applicable to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with diverse flight characteristics. Existing morphing technologies require additional mechanisms and driving devices, posing challenges in constructing features such as ribs and spars within the wing structure, leading to structural instability. To address this, we developed a Variable-Camber and Variable-Chord (VCC) morphing flap that could maintains a continuously transforming surface during deformation, altering both camber shape and chord length simultaneously. Furthermore, we conducted design and fabrication of UAV wings incorporating these morphing flaps, ensuring structural stability by developing specialized shapes. Furthermore, structural experiments were conducted to simulate flight loads, followed by actual flight tests to validate performances of both morphing mechanism and wings. Finally, wind tunnel tests were conducted to compare results with aerodynamic analysis, confirming the effective applicability of this morphing technology.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.355-360
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• 2017

Recently, with the development of autonomous vehicle technology, the importance of precise road maps is increasing. A precise road map is a digital map with lane information, regulations, safety information, and various road facilities. Conventional precise road maps have been tested and developed based on the mobile mapping system (MMS). But they have not been activated due to high introduction costs. However, in the case of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the application field is continuously increasing. This study tries to extract information through classification of high-resolution UAV images for autonomous driving. Autonomous vehicle test roads were selected as study sites, and high-resolution orthoimages were produced using UAVs. In addition, the utilization of high-resolution orthoimages has been proposed by effectively extracting data for precise road map construction, such as road lines, guards, and machines through image classification. If additional experimentation and verification are performed, the field of UAV image use will be expanded, providing the data to automobile manufacturers and related public and private organizations, and venture companies will contribute to the development of domestic autonomous vehicle technology.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.6 no.9
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• pp.429-436
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• 2017

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) that are piloted without human pilots can be commanded remotely via frequencies or perform pre-inputted missions. UAVs have been mainly used for military purposes, but due to the development of ICT technology, they are now widely used in the private sector. Teal Group's 2014 World UAV Forecast predicts that the UAV market will grow by 10% annually over the next decade, reaching $ 12.5 billion by 2023. However, because UAVs are primarily remotely controlled, if a malicious user accesses a remotely controlled UAV, it could seriously infringe privacy and cause financial loss or even loss of life. To solve this problem, a secure channel must be established through mutual authentication between the UAV and the control center. However, existing security techniques require a lot of computing resources and power, and because communication distances, infrastructure, and data flow are different from UAV networks, it is unsuitable for application in UAV environments. To resolve this problem, the study presents a lightweight UAV authentication method based on Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) that requires less computing resources in the ground Control and Non-Payload Communication (CNPC) environment, where recently, technology standardization is actively under progress.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.444-450
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• 2015

The accuracy of small and low cost CCD camera is insufficient to provide data for precisely tracking unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs). This study shows how UAV can hover on a human targeted tracking object by using CCD camera rather than imprecise GPS data. To realize this, UAVs need to recognize their attitude and position in known environment as well as unknown environment. Moreover, it is necessary for their localization to occur naturally. It is desirable for an UAV to estimate of his attitude by environment recognition for UAV hovering, as one of the best important problems. In this paper, we describe a method for the attitude of an UAV using image information of a maker on the floor. This method combines the observed position from GPS sensors and the estimated attitude from the images captured by a fixed camera to estimate an UAV. Using the a priori known path of an UAV in the world coordinates and a perspective camera model, we derive the geometric constraint equations which represent the relation between image frame coordinates for a marker on the floor and the estimated UAV's attitude. Since the equations are based on the estimated position, the measurement error may exist all the time. The proposed method utilizes the error between the observed and estimated image coordinates to localize the UAV. The Kalman filter scheme is applied for this method. its performance is verified by the image processing results and the experiment.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.427-433
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• 2022

Obstacle detection, collision recognition, and avoidance technologies are required the collision avoidance technology for UAVs. In this paper, considering collinear multiple static obstacle, we propose an obstacle detection algorithm using LiDAR and a collision recognition and avoidance algorithm based on CPA. Preprocessing is performed to remove the ground from the LiDAR measurement data before obstacle detection. And we detect and classify obstacles in the preprocessed data using the K-means clustering algorithm. Also, we estimate the absolute positions of detected obstacles using relative navigation and correct the estimated positions using a low-pass filter. For collision avoidance with the detected multiple static obstacle, we use a collision recognition and avoidance algorithm based on CPA. Information of obstacles to be avoided is updated using distance between each obstacle, and collision recognition and avoidance are performed through the updated obstacles information. Finally, through obstacle location estimation, collision recognition, and collision avoidance result analysis in the Gazebo simulation environment, we verified that collision avoidance is performed successfully.