• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.24-30
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• 2016

The accuracy of small and low-cost CCD cameras is insufficient to provide data for precisely tracking unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This study shows how a quad rotor UAV can hover on a human targeted tracking object by using data from a CCD camera rather than imprecise GPS data. To realize this, quadcopter UAVs need to recognize their position and posture in known environments as well as unknown environments. Moreover, it is necessary for their localization to occur naturally. It is desirable for UAVs to estimate their position by solving uncertainty for quadcopter UAV hovering, as this is one of the most important problems. In this paper, we describe a method for determining the altitude of a quadcopter UAV using image information of a moving object like a walking human. This method combines the observed position from GPS sensors and the estimated position from images captured by a fixed camera to localize a UAV. Using the a priori known path of a quadcopter UAV in the world coordinates and a perspective camera model, we derive the geometric constraint equations that represent the relation between image frame coordinates for a moving object and the estimated quadcopter UAV's altitude. Since the equations are based on the geometric constraint equation, measurement error may exist all the time. The proposed method utilizes the error between the observed and estimated image coordinates to localize the quadcopter UAV. The Kalman filter scheme is applied for this method. Its performance is verified by a computer simulation and experiments.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.35-41
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• 2018

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have been used for various purposes in multiple fields, such as observation, communication relaying, and information acquisition. Nowadays, UAVs must have high performance in order to acquire more precise information in larger amounts than is now possible while performing for long periods. At present, domestically, a high-altitude long-endurance UAV (HALE UAV) for long-term flight in the stratosphere has been developed in order to replace some functions of the satellite. In this study, as a part of structural soundness evaluation of the aircraft structure developed for the HALE UAV, the structural soundness of the fasteners of the fuselage and tail is evaluated by calculating the margin of safety(M.S). The result confirms the validity of the design of the fasteners in the aircraft structure of the UAV.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.214-224
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• 2024

Sonobuoys are disposable devices that utilize sound waves for information gathering, detecting engine noises, and capturing various acoustic characteristics. They play a crucial role in accurately detecting underwater targets, making them effective detection systems in anti-submarine warfare. Existing sonobuoy deployment methods in multistatic systems often rely on fixed patterns or heuristic-based rules, lacking efficiency in terms of the number of sonobuoys deployed and operational time due to the unpredictable mobility of the underwater targets. Thus, this paper proposes an optimal sonobuoy placement strategy for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to overcome the limitations of conventional sonobuoy deployment methods. The proposed approach utilizes reinforcement learning in a simulation-based experimental environment that considers the movements of the underwater targets. The Unity ML-Agents framework is employed, and the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithm is utilized for UAV learning in a virtual operational environment with real-time interactions. The reward function is designed to consider the number of sonobuoys deployed and the cost associated with sound sources and receivers, enabling effective learning. The proposed reinforcement learning-based deployment strategy compared to the conventional sonobuoy deployment methods in the same experimental environment demonstrates superior performance in terms of detection success rate, deployed sonobuoy count, and operational time.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.3858-3874
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• 2021

As an essential part of the urban transportation system, precise perception of the traffic flow parameters at the traffic signal intersection ensures traffic safety and fully improves the intersection's capacity. Traditional detection methods of road traffic flow parameter can be divided into the micro and the macro. The microscopic detection methods include geomagnetic induction coil technology, aerial detection technology based on the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and camera video detection technology based on the fixed scene. The macroscopic detection methods include floating car data analysis technology. All the above methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Recently, indoor location methods based on wireless signals have attracted wide attention due to their applicability and low cost. This paper extends the wireless signal indoor location method to the outdoor intersection scene for traffic flow parameter estimation. In this paper, the detection scene is constructed at the intersection based on the received signal strength indication (RSSI) ranging technology extracted from the wireless signal. We extracted the RSSI data from the wireless signals sent to the road side unit (RSU) by the vehicle nodes, calibrated the RSSI ranging model, and finally obtained the traffic flow parameters of the intersection entrance road. We measured the average speed of traffic flow through multiple simulation experiments, the trajectory of traffic flow, and the spatiotemporal map at a single intersection inlet. Finally, we obtained the queue length of the inlet lane at the intersection. The simulation results of the experiment show that the RSSI ranging positioning method based on wireless signals can accurately estimate the traffic flow parameters at the intersection, which also provides a foundation for accurately estimating the traffic flow state in the future era of the Internet of Vehicles.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.6_1
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• pp.973-985
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• 2019

In this paper, we propose a method to separate the ground and building areas and generate building models automatically through planarity analysis using UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) based point cloud. In this study, proposed method includes five steps. In the first step, the planes of the point cloud were extracted by analyzing the planarity of the input point cloud. In the second step, the extracted planes were analyzed to find a plane corresponding to the ground surface. Then, the points corresponding to the plane were removed from the point cloud. In the third step, we generate ortho-projected image from the point cloud ground surface removed. In the fourth step, the outline of each object was extracted from the ortho-projected image. Then, the non-building area was removed using the area, area / length ratio. Finally, the building's outer points were constructed using the building's ground height and the building's height. Then, 3D building models were created. In order to verify the proposed method, we used point clouds made using the UAV images. Through experiments, we confirmed that the 3D models of the building were generated automatically.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.78-85
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• 2022

Multicopter-type unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are increasingly for cargo transportation to mountainous and island regions, image information acquisition in disaster areas, and emergency rescue transport. In order to successfully perform these tasks, the aircraft structure must be able to safely support the loads induced by flight conditions while ensuring the vibration and aeroelastic stability of the prop-rotor. This study introduced a structural analysis model of a 40kg payload multicopter with an engine-generator hybrid power system. The deformation and stress distribution are investigated depending on the load conditions. In addition, the vibration characteristics and aeroelastic stability of the prop-rotor were also presented to flight speed and aircraft pitch angle. The maximum thrust generated by the prop-rotor and the landing load applied to the multicopter under normal and emergency landing conditions were reviewed., It confirmed that the structure could support without failure. In addition, it confirmed that the damping characteristics of each primary locate in the constant region according to the aircraft's flight speed and the prop-rotors rotating speed.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.134-141
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• 2019

Radar systems are divided into the pulse Doppler (PD) radar and the frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar depending on the transmission waveform. In particular, the PD radar is advantageous for long-range target detection, and the FMCW radar is suitable for short-range target detection. In this paper, we present design and implementation results for a multi-mode radar signal processor (RSP) that can support both PD and FMCW radar systems to detect unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at short distances as well as long distances. The proposed radar signal processor can be implemented based on Altera Cyclone-IV FPGA with 19,623 logic elements, 9,759 registers, and 25,190,400 memory bits. The logic elements and registers of the proposed radar signal processor are reduced by approximately 43% and 30%, respectively, compared to the sum of logic elements and registers of the conventional PD radar and FMCW radar signal processor.

• 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.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.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.37 no.2C
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• pp.206-216
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• 2012

Today's war fields can be characterized by net-centric wars where a variety of independent weapon systems are operated in connection with each other via networks. As such, weapon systems become dramatically advanced in terms of complexity, functionality, precision and so on. It is then obvious that the defense R&D of those requires systematic and efficient development tools enabling the effective management of the complexity, budget/cost, development time, and risk all together. One viable approach is known to be the development methods based on systems engineering, which is already proved to successful in U.S. In this paper, a systems engineering approach is studied to be used in the conceptual design of advanced weapon systems. The approach is utilizing some graphical models in the design phase. As a target system, an unmanned aerial vehicle system is considered and the standard SysML is also used as a modeling language to create models. The generated models have several known merits such as ease of understanding and communication. The interrelationships between the models and the design artifacts are identified, which should be useful in the generation of some design documents that are required in the defense R&D. The result reported here could be utilized in the further study that can eventually lead to a full-scale model-based systems engineering method.