• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.402-410
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• 2017

Acoustic based localization is essential to operate autonomous robotic systems in underwater environment where the use of sensorial data is limited. This paper proposes a localization method using artificial underwater acoustic sources. The proposed method acquires directional angles of acoustic sources using time difference of arrivals of two hydrophones. For this purpose, a probabilistic approach is used for accurate estimation of the time delay. Then, Gaussian sum filter based SLAM technique is used to localize both acoustic sources and underwater vehicle. It is performed by using bearing of acoustic sources as measurement and inertial sensors as prediction model. The proposed method can handle directional ambiguity of time difference based source localization by generating Gaussian models corresponding to possible locations of both front and back sides. Through these processes, the proposed method can provide reliable localization method for underwater vehicles without any prior information of source locations. The performance of the proposed method is verified by experimental results conducted in a real sea environment.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2018

This paper describes a study on posture control of the multi-legged biomimetic underwater robot (CALEB10). Because the underwater environment has a feature that all degrees of freedom are coupled to each other, we designed the posture control algorithm by separating each degree of freedom. Not only should the research on posture control of underwater robots be a precedent study for position control, but it is also necessary to compensate disturbance in each direction. In the research on the yaw directional posture control, we made the drag force generated by the stroke of the left leg and the right leg occur asymmetrically, in order that a rotational moment is generated along the yaw direction. In the composite swimming controller in which the controllers in each direction are combined, we designed the algorithm to determine the control weights in each direction according to the error angle along the yaw direction. The performance of the proposed posture control method is verified by a dynamical simulator and underwater experiments.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.540-545
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• 1993

When modeling an underwater vehicle uncertainty arises in the presence of unsteady flow. It is difficult to include the uncertainty in the model and is therefore desirable to investigate robust controller design methods for the underwater vehicle. In the paper two robust control methods are applied for the underwater system. One is standard H$_{\infty}$ control and the other is time-varying sliding mode control with modified saturation function. Suboptimal design parameters for H$_{\infty}$ control and design parameters for time-varying switching surfaces are provided. Simulations and comparison are carried out.t.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.268-268
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• 2000

In the inspection of the reactor pressure vessel using an underwater mobile robot, we developed a new bi-directional guidance control scheme between an underwater mobile robot and a laser pointer. We imposed fanning to the inclinometer embedded in the mobile robot to improve its transient response, and used heuristic control scheme to reduce accidents when the laser pointer losts the mobile robot. We implemented these algorithms to our reactor vessel inspect ion system and performed a series of experiments.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.197-205
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• 2014

As computer vision algorithms are developed on a continuous basis, the visual information from vision sensors has been widely used in the context of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), called visual SLAM, which utilizes relative motion information between images. This research addresses a visual SLAM framework for online localization and mapping in an unstructured seabed environment that can be applied to a low-cost unmanned underwater vehicle equipped with a single monocular camera as a major measurement sensor. Typically, an image motion model with a predefined dimensionality can be corrupted by errors due to the violation of the model assumptions, which may lead to performance degradation of the visual SLAM estimation. To deal with the erroneous image motion model, this study employs a local bundle optimization (LBO) scheme when a closed loop is detected. The results of comparison between visual SLAM estimation with LBO and the other case are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.341-348
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• 2013

A location estimation algorithm based on the sea-surface beacon is proposed in this paper. The beacon is utilized to provide ultrasonic signals to the underwater vehicles around the beacon to estimate precise position of underwater vehicles (ROV, AUV, Diver robot), which is named as USBL (Ultra Short Baseline) system. It utilizes GPS and INS data for estimating its position and adopts DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) de-noising filter and UKF (Unscented KALMAN Filter) elaborating the position estimation. The beacon system aims at estimating the precise position of underwater vehicle by using USBL to receive the tracking signals. The most important one for the precise position estimation of underwater vehicle is estimating the position of the beacon system precisely. Since the beacon is on the sea-waves, the received GPS signals are noisy and unstable most of times. Therefore, the INS data (gyroscope sensor, accelerometer, magnetic compass) are obtained at the beacon on the sea-surface to compensate for the inaccuracy of the GPS data. The noises in the acceleration data from INS data are reduced by using DWT de-noising filter in this research. Finally the UKF localization system is proposed in this paper and the system performance is verified by real experiments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.1197-1204
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• 2008

This paper presents an asymptotic formation control scheme for a group of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) where only three control inputs - surge force, yaw moment and pitch moment are available for each vehicle's six degree of freedom (DOF) underwater motion. Usually, the dynamics agents applied in most of the formation algorithms presented so far have been modeled as particle systems, which is a simple double-integrator system. Therefore, these algorithms cannot be directly applicable to the practical systems, especially to the underwater vehicles whose dynamics are highly nonlinear. Moreover, the vehicles considered in this paper are underactuated. The formation control is derived using general potential function method, and the corresponding potential function consists of two parts: interactions between vehicles and virtual-leader following. Proposed formation scheme guarantees asymptotic local stability of closed-loop system. Numerical simulations are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of proposed formation scheme.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.402-407
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• 2014

In this paper, residual sway control of objects that are moved underwater is investigated. The fuel transfer system in a nuclear power plant transfers the nuclear fuel rods underwater. The research on the dynamics of the loads transferred in different mediums (water and air) and their control methods have not been fully developed yet. The attenuation characteristics of the fuel transfer system have been studied to minimize its residual vibration by considering the effects of hydrodynamic forces acting on the fuel rod. First, a mathematical model is derived for the underwater fuel transfer system, and then experiments have been conducted to study the dynamic behavior of the rod while it travels underwater. Lastly, the residual vibration at the end point is minimized using the input shaping technique.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.156-162
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• 2016

For the underwater localization, acoustic sensor systems are widely used due to greater penetration properties of acoustic signals in underwater environments. On the other hand, the good penetration property causes multipath and interference effects in structured environment too. To overcome this demerit, a localization method using the attenuation of electro-magnetic(EM) waves was proposed in several literatures, in which distance estimation and 2D-localization experiments show remarkable results. However, in 3D-localization application, the estimation difficulties increase due to the nonuniform (doughnut like) radiation pattern of an omni-directional antenna related to the depth direction. For solving this problem, we added a depth sensor for improving underwater 3D-localization with the EM wave method. A micro scale pressure sensor is located in the mobile node antenna, and the depth data from the pressure sensor is calibrated by the curve fitting algorithm. We adapted the depth(z) data to 3D EM wave pattern model for the error reduction of the localization. Finally, some experiments were executed for 3D localization with the fast calculation and less errors.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.57-66
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• 2014

This paper describes the design concept of a bio-inspired legged underwater and estimating its performance by implementing simulations. Especially the leg structure of an underwater organism, diving beetles, is fully adopted to our designing to employ its efficiency for swimming. To make it possible for the robot to both walk and swim, the transformable kinematic model according to applications of the leg is proposed. To aid in the robot development and estimate swimming performance of the robot in advance, an underwater simulator has been constructed and an approximated model based on the developing robot was set up in the simulation. Furthermore, previous work that we have done, the swimming locomotion produced by a swimming patten generator based on the control parameters, is briefly mentioned in the paper and adopted to the simulation for extensive studies such as path planning and control techniques. Through the results, we established the strategy of leg joints which make the robot swim in the three dimensional space to reach effective controls.