• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.956-961
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• 2007

We propose a new distance measurement method and local positioning system for the autonomous mobile robots localization. The distance measurement method is able to measure long-range distances with a high accuracy by using ultrasonic sensors. The time of flight of the ultrasonic waves include various noises is calculated accurately by the proposed period detecting method. The proposed local positioning system is composed of four ultrasonic transmitters and one ultrasonic receiver. The ultrasonic transmitter and receiver are separated but they are synchronized by RF (Radio frequency) signal. The proposed system using ultrasonic waves is represented as USAT(Ultrasonic Satellite System). USAT is able to estimate the position using the least square estimation. The experimental results show that the proposed local positioning system enables to estimate the absolute position precisely.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.647-655
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• 2008

This paper presents real-time algorithm for an ultrasonic Local Positioning System(LPS). An ultrasonic LPS consists of 4 transmitters and n receivers. Each transmitter transmits an sequential ultrasonic signal to avoid interference of ultrasonic signal. This method is a noneffective application for a fast object. Because receiver detects four sequential transmissive ultrasonic signal and calculates a position. This paper proposes the method which 4 transmitters transmit simultaneous ultrasonic signal and each transmitter distinguished by frequencies and codes. And Auto-Correlation Function(ACF) method separates codes from an ultrasonic echo signal which is interference of each transmitter's code. If the receiver uses only ACF method, it is difficult to implement real time application for increased computation. This paper implements LPS using dual frequencies and ACF method. Using dual frequencies reduces codes length. The reduced codes length save computation in ACF. To prove this algorithm by experiment, high performance DSP(digital signal processor) used. The result shows the performance of the designed system is good enough positioning.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.609-618
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• 2006

This paper presents the lateral control of an autonomous vehicle by using a look-ahead sensing system. In look-ahead sensing by an absolute positioning system, a reference lane, constructed by straight lanes or circular lanes, was switched by a segment switching algorithm. To cope with sensor noise and modeling uncertainty, a robust LMI-based $H_{\infty}$ lateral controller was designed by the feedback of lateral offset and yaw angle error at the vehicle look-ahead. In order to verify the safety and the performance of lateral control, a scaled-down vehicle was developed and the location of the vehicle was detected by using an ultrasonic local positioning system. In the mechatronic scaled-down vehicle, the lateral model and parameters are verified and estimated by a J-turn test. For the lane change and reference lane tracking, the lateral controllers are used experimentally. The experimental results show that the $H_{\infty}$ controller is robust and has better performance compared with look-down sensing.