• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.1775-1780
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• 2005

One of the most important factors so that mobile objects can achieve their purpose is the information about their positions. In this paper, we propose an improved beacon system, to which ultrasonic sensors are attached, for the indoor localization of mobile objects. We have researched so that it can cover the wider space and estimate more accurate positions than the existent beacon systems. The existent beacon systems have the constraint that one beacon cannot cover wide area since ultrasonic sensors have limits in the angle of signal (beam-angle) on which their signal strength depends. Hence, we used the active beacon which consists of a pan-tilt mechanism and a beacon module. The active beacon system can always aim at mobile objects in order to transmit the strongest signal of the ultrasonic sensors into the objects using the pan-tilt mechanism. In addition, this system is inexpensive because it can decrease the number of beacons by about a half of the beacons of the existent system. Finally, the results show what is the difference between the active beacon system and existent beacon systems, and how accurate it is.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1996.10b
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• pp.916-919
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• 1996

An real-time active beacon localization system for mobile robots is developed and implemented. This system permits the estimation of robot positions when detecting light sources by PSD(Position Sensitive Detector) sensor which are placed sparsely over the robot's work space as beacons(or landmarks). An LSE(Least Square Estimation) method is introduced to calibrate the internal parameters of a model for the beacon and robot position. The proposed system has two operational modes of position estimation. One is the initial position calculation by the detection of two or more light sources positions of which are known. The other is the continuous position compensation that calculates the position and heading of the robot using the IEKF(Iterated Extended Kalman Filter) applied to the beacon and dead-reckoning data. Practical experiments show that the estimated position obtained by this system is precise enough to be useful for the navigation of robots.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.221-226
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• 2007

A robust position-sensing system is proposed in this paper for ubiquitous mobile robots which move indoor as well as outdoor. The Differential GPS (DGPS) which has position estimation error of less than 5 m is a general solution when the mobile robots are moving outdoor, while an active beacon system (ABS) with embedded ultrasonic sensors is selected as an indoor positioning system. The switching from the outdoor to indoor or vice versa causes unstable measurements on account of the reference and algorithm changes. To minimize the switching time in the position estimation and to stabilize the measurement, a robust position-sensing system is proposed. In the system, to minimize the switching delay, the door positions are stored and updated in a database. The reliability and accuracy of the robust positioning system based on DGPS and ABS are verified through the real experiments using a mobile robot prepared for this research and demonstrated.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.330-336
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• 1996

An real-time active beacon localization system for mobile robots is developed and implemented. This system permits the estimation of robot positions when detecting light sources by PSD(Position Sensitive Detector) sensor which are placed sparsely over the robots work space as beacons(or landmarks). An LSE(Least Square Estimation) method is introduced to calibrate the internal parameters of a model for the beacon and robot position. The proposed system has two operational modes of position estimation. One is the initial position calculation by the detection of two or more light sources positions of which are known. The other is the continuous position compensation that calculates the position and heading of the robot using the IEKF(Iterated Extended Kalman Filter) applied to the beacon and dead-reckoning data. Practical experiments show that the estimated position obtained by this system is precise enough to be useful for the navigation of robots.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.40-47
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• 2007

Recently, with the development of service robots and with the new concept of ubiquitous world, the position estimation of mobile objects has been raised to an important problem. As pre-liminary research results, some of the localization schemes are introduced, which provide the absolute location of the moving objects subjected to large errors. To implement a precise and convenient localization system, a new absolute position estimation method for a mobile robot in indoor environment is proposed in this paper. Design and implementation of the localization system comes from the usage of active beacon systems (based upon RFID technology). The active beacon system is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter: 1. The RFID receiver gets the synchronization signal from the mobile robot and 2. The ultra-sonic transmitter sends out the traveling signal to be used for measuring the distance. Position of a mobile robot in a three dimensional space can be calculated basically from the distance information from three beacons and the absolute position information of the beacons themselves. Since it is not easy to install the beacons at a specific position precisely, there exists a large localization error and the installation time takes long. To overcome these problems, and provide a precise and convenient localization system, a new auto calibration algorithm is developed in this paper. Also the extended Kalman filter has been adopted for improving the localization accuracy during the mobile robot navigation. The localization accuracy improvement through the proposed auto calibration algorithm and the extended Kalman filter has been demonstrated by the real experiments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.996-1001
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• 2005

Recently, with the development of service robots and with the new concept of ubiquitous world, the position estimation of mobile objects has been raised to an important problem. As pre-liminary research results, some of the localization schemes are introduced, which provide the relative location of the moving objects subjected to accumulated errors. To implement a real time localization system, a new absolute position estimation method for a mobile robot in indoor environment is proposed in this paper. Design and implementation of the localization system comes from the usage of active beacon systems (based upon RFID technology). The active beacon system is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter: 1. The RFID receiver gets the synchronization signal from the mobile robot and 2. The ultra-sonic transmitter sends out the traveling signal to be used for measuring the distance. Position of a mobile robot in a three dimensional space can be calculated basically from the distance information from. Three beacons and the absolute position information of the beacons themselves. In some case, the mobile robot can get the ultrasonic signals from only one or two beacons, because of the obstacles located along the moving path. Therefore, in this paper, as one of our dedicated contribution, the position estimation scheme with less than three sensors has been developed. Also, the extended Kalman filter algorithm is applied for the improvement of position estimation accuracy of the mobile robot.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.280-285
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• 2011

Recently, with the development of service robots and the concept of ubiquitous, the position estimation of mobile objects has received great interest. Some of the localization schemes are introduced, which provide the relative location of the moving objects subjected to accumulated errors. To implement a real time localization system, a new absolute position estimation method for a mobile robot in indoor environment is proposed. Design and implementation of the localization system comes from the usage of active beacon systems (based upon RFID technology). The active beacon system is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter. The RFID receiver gets the synchronization signal from the mobile robot and the ultra-sonic transmitter sends out the traveling signal to be used for measuring the distance. Position of a mobile robot in a three dimensional space can be calculated basically from the distance information from three beacons and the absolute position information of the beacons themselves. In some case, the mobile robot can acquire the ultrasonic signals from only one or two beacons, due to the obstacles located along the moving path. In this paper, a position estimation scheme using fewer than three sensors is developed. Also, the extended Kalman filter algorithm is applied for the improvement of position estimation accuracy of the mobile robot.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.270-271
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• 2015

Recently, There is Increasing interest in the intelligent services using the Internet of Things indoor positioning technologies that enable the communication of information between the objects. In particular Applications and demand for the indoor location based services using smart devices has made active. An indoor location positioning technology for this purpose BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) has been a lot of interest in technology increases. If iBeacon of BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy) is made available to provide a signal for the indoor location information measurement then reliability of Indoor location information is lowered by signal interference. In this paper, Proposes a technique for data acquisition method for obtaining reliable position information and reliable position information calculation method from signal information data of iBeacon.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.1139-1145
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• 2008

A robust position sensing system is proposed in this paper for a ubiquitous mobile robot which moves indoors as well as outdoors. The Differential GPS (DGPS) which has a position estimation error of less than 5 m is a general solution when the mobile robot is moving outdoor, while an active beacon system (ABS) with embedded ultrasonic sensors is reliable as an indoor positioning system. The switching from the outdoor to indoor or vice versa causes unstable measurements on account of the reference coordinates and algorithm changes. To minimize the switching time in the position estimation and to stabilize the measurement, a robust position sensing system is proposed. In the system, to minimize the switching delay, the door positions are stored and updated in a database. Using the database, the approaching status of the mobile robot from indoor to outdoor or vice versa has been checked and the switching conditions are prepared before the mobile robot actually moves out or moves into the door. The reliability and accuracy of the robust positioning system based on DGPS and ABS are verified and demonstrated through the real experiments using a mobile robot prepared for this research.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.608-614
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• 2008

This paper describes a location tracking system to guide landing process of an Unmanned Helicopter(UMH) exploiting MIT Cricket nodes. For automatic landing of a UMH, a precise positioning system is indispensable. However, GPS(Global Positioning System) is inadequate for tracking the three dimensional position of a UMH because of large positioning errors. The Cricket systems use Time-Difference-of-Arrival(TDoA) method with ultrasonic and RF(Radio Frequency) signals to measure distances. They operate in passive mode in that a listener attached to a moving device receives distance signals from several beacons located at fixed points on ground. Inevitably, this passive type of implementation causes large disturbances in measuring distances between beacons and the listener due to wind blow from propeller and turbulence of UMH body. To cope with this problem, we proposed active type of implementation for positioning a UMH. In this implementation, a beacon is set up at UMH body and four listeners are located at ground area at least where the UMH will land. A pair of Ultrasonic and RF signals from the beacon arrives at several listeners to calculate the position of the UMH. The distance signals among listeners are synchronized with a counter value appended to each distance signals from the beacon.