• Journal of Multimedia Information System
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.195-204
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• 2017

Mobile robots are used for years as a valuable research and educational tool in form of available open-platform designs and Do-It-Yourself kits. Rapid development and costs reduction of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) and ground based mobile robots in recent years allowed researchers to utilize them as an affordable research platform. Despite of recent developments in the area of ground and airborne robotics, only few examples of Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) platforms targeted for research purposes can be found. Aim of this paper is to present the development of open-design USV drone with integrated multi-level control hardware architecture. Proposed catamaran - type water surface drone enables direct control over wireless radio link, separate development of algorithms for optimal propulsion control, navigation and communication with the ground-based control station. Whole design is highly modular, where each component can be replaced or modified according to desired task, payload or environmental conditions. Developed USV is planned to be utilized as a part of the system for detection and identification of marine and lake waste. Cameras mounted to the USV would record sea or lake surfaces, and recorded video sequences and images would be processed by state-of-the-art computer vision and machine learning algorithms in order to identify and classify marine and lake waste.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.61 no.3
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• pp.170-184
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• 2024

With the advancement of autonomous navigation technology in maritime domain, there is an active research on swarming Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) that can fulfill missions with low cost and high efficiency. In this study, we propose a formation control algorithm that maintains a certain shape when multiple unmanned surface vehicles operate in a swarm. In the case of swarming, individual USVs need to be able to accurately follow the target state and avoid collisions with obstacles or other vessels in the swarm. In order to generate guidance commands for swarm formation control, the potential field method has been a major focus of swarm control research, but the method using the potential field only uses the position information of obstacles or other ships, so it cannot effectively respond to moving targets and obstacles. In situations such as the formation change of a swarm of ships, the formation control is performed in a dense environment, so the position and velocity information of the target and nearby obstacles must be considered to effectively change the formation. In order to overcome these limitations, this paper applies a method that considers relative velocity to the potential field-based guidance law to improve target following and collision avoidance performance. Considering the relative velocity of the moving target, the potential field for nearby obstacles is newly defined by utilizing the concept of Velocity Obstacle (VO), and the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method is verified through swarm control simulation, and swarm control experiments using a small scaled unmanned surface vehicle platform.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.238-245
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• 2023

As technologies have been more quickly developed in this 4th Industry Revolution era, their application to defense industry has been also growing. With these much advanced technologies, we attempt to use Manned-Unmanned Teaming systems in various military operations. In this study, we consider the Location-Routing Problem for reconnaissance surveillance missions of the maritime manned-unmanned surface vehicles. As a solution technique, the two-phase method is presented. In the first location phase, the p-median problem is solved to determine which nodes are used as the seeds for the manned vehicles using Lagrangian relaxation with the subgradient method. In the second routing phase, using the results obtained from the location phase, the Vehicle Routing Problems are solved to determine the search routes of the unmanned vehicles by applying the Location Based Heuristic. For three network data sets, computational experiments are conducted to show the performance of the proposed two-phase method.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.39-46
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• 2012

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a powered aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or non-lethal payload. An UAV is very important weapon system and is currently being employed in many military missions (surveillance, reconnaissance, communication relay, targeting, strike, etc.) in the war. To accomplish UAV's missions, guarantee of survivability should be preceded. The main objective of this study is a local path planning to maximize survivability for UAV on the battlefield of dynamic threats (obstacles, surface-to-air missiles, radar etc.). A local path planning is capable of producing a new path in response to environmental changes. This study suggests a $Smart$ $A^*$ (Smart A-star) algorithm for local path planning. The local path planned by $Smart$ $A^*$ algorithm is compared with the results of existing algorithms ($A^*$ $Replanner$, $D^*$) and evaluated performance of $Smart$ $A^*$ algorithm. The result of suggested algorithm gives the better solutions when compared with existing algorithms.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.40-46
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• 2018

In order to successfully detect and identify underwater targets located on the seabed, unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) typically acquire acoustic signals with a side-scan sonar device and reconstruct information about the target from the processed images. As the quality of the side-scan sonar images acquired by USVs depends on the environment and operating parameters, using modeling and simulation techniques to design side-scan sonar devices can help optimize the reconstruction of the sonar images. In this work, we study a side-scan sonar design for use in USVs, that takes the movement of the platform into account. First, we constructed a simulated seabed environment with underwater targets, and specified the maneuvering conditions and sonar systems. We then generated the acoustic signals from the simulated environment using the sonar equation. Finally, we successfully imaged the simulated seabed environment using simple signal processing. Our results can be used to derive USV side-scan sonar design parameters, predict the resulting sonar images in various conditions, and as a basis for determining the optimal sonar parameters of the system.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.31-40
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• 2023

This asymed drone controller is indispensable for two components: Guidance and Controller. In which the Ministry of Guidance will receive waypoints from which to form an orbit then combine the data with the current location of the vessel, thereby calculating and also supplying the controller to drive the vehicle to follow the outlined trajectory. This article will use the Line Of Sight (LOS) algorithm to design the Guidance and Controller sets. The result as well as the effectiveness of the controller will be shown through matlab/SIMULINK simulation.

• Composites Research
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.47-51
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• 2014

The purpose of the present study is to develop lightweight and simple smart actuators in order to replace conventional hydraulic/pneumatic actuators, and to apply the developed actuators to the actuation systems of a small unmanned air vehicle. This research describes the procedures of design, manufacturing of the piezo-composite actuator, and the performance evaluation. From the test results of the developed devices, we found the possibility of piezo-composite actuator could be used as a control surface of a small UAV system. We have designed and manufactured two kinds of piezo-composite actuators, unimorph actuator and bimorph actuator. The manufactured actuators were evaluated through the performance testes. It was found that the bimorph type actuator showed more linear angle change for the same excitation voltage variation than unimorph type. It is expected that piezo-composite actuator has a possibility to be used not only as a control surface of small unmanned flying vehicle but also as a control surface actuator of a guided missile fin through the miniaturization of power supply and control system.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.435-448
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• 2021

This study describes the depth and straight motion control performance depending on control surface combinations of a supercavitating underwater vehicle. When an underwater vehicle experiences supercavitation, friction resistance can be minimized, thus achieving the effect of super-high-speed driving. Six degrees of freedom modeling of the underwater vehicle are performed and the guidance and control loops are designed with not only a cavitator and an elevator, but also a rudder and a differential elevator to improve the stability of the roll and yaw axis. The control performance based on the combination of control surfaces is analyzed by the root-mean-square error for keeping depth and straight motion.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.817-832
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• 2015

This paper presents a state feedback based backstepping control algorithm to address the trajectory tracking problem of an underactuated Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) in the horizontal plane. A nonlinear three Degree of Freedom (DOF) underactuated dynamic model for USV is considered, and trajectory tracking controller that can track both curve trajectory and straight line trajectory with high accuracy is designed as the well known Persistent Exciting (PE) conditions of yaw velocity is completely relaxed in our study. The proposed controller has further been enriched by incorporating an integral action additionally for enhancing the steady state performance and control precision of the USV trajectory tracking control system. Global stability of the overall system is proved by Lyapunov theory and Barbalat's Lemma, and then simulation experiments are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the controller designed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.62-69
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• 2014

The capability and cost effectiveness of UUV and USV bring to underwater survey, target detection and identification operations have been widely demonstrated and accepted in recent years. Future USV systems may deploy UUVs to gain the advantage of higher area coverage rates through multiple and simultaneous operations. In this paper, we present an architecture of USV and UUV for mine countermeasure with results of measures on effectiveness.