• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.1082-1091
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• 2007

In this paper, we developed a new hybrid mobile robot which can climb stairs and go over thresholds by crawl gait with embedded real-time control software. This robot is also categorized into hybrid robot that has advantages of wheeled mobile robot and legged mobile robot, but adopts gait feature of crocodile named belly crawl. We imitated the belly crawl using four legs of 2 DOF, four omni-directional wheels, and embedded control software which controls legs and wheels. This software is developed using RTAI/Linux, real-time drivers. As a result, the new hybrid mobile robot has crawl gait. Using this feature, the new hybrid mobile robot can climb stairs and go over thresholds just by path planning of each leg with size of stairs and thresholds, and computing the movement distance of robot body center without considering stability. The performance of our new hybrid mobile robot is verified via experiments.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.167-177
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• 2019

Even though so much progresses have been achieved in Multiple Object Tracking (MOT), most of reported MOT methods are not still satisfactory for commercial embedded products like Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera. In this paper, we propose a real-time multiple pedestrians tracking method for embedded environments. First, we design a new light weight convolutional neural network(CNN)-based pedestrian detector, which is constructed to detect even small size pedestrians, as well. For further saving of processing time, the designed detector is applied for every other frame, and Kalman filter is employed to predict pedestrians' positions in frames where the designed CNN-based detector is not applied. The pose orientation information is incorporated to enhance object association for tracking pedestrians without further computational cost. Through experiments on Nvidia's embedded computing board, Jetson TX2, it is verified that the designed pedestrian detector detects even small size pedestrians fast and well, compared to many state-of-the-art detectors, and that the proposed tracking method can track pedestrians in real-time and show accuracy performance comparably to performances of many state-of-the-art tracking methods, which do not target for operation in embedded systems.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.173-182
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• 2014

The CRT monitor display system for SONAR signal that are commonly used in ships or naval vessels uses vector scanning method. Therefore the processing circuits of the system are complex. Also the purchase of parts is difficult as well as high-cost because the production had been shut down. FPGA-based embedded system is flexible to various digital applications because it can be able to simplify processing circuits and to make a easy customized design for end user, and it provides low-cost high-speed performance. In this paper, we describe an implementation of FPGA embedded system for real-time SONAR signal display using the triple buffering method to overcome some weakness of existing CRT system. Our system provides real-time acquisition and display capability of SONAR signal, and removes afterimage effect that is a critical problem of the system proposed in the preceding study.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.177-189
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• 2015

High-performance processors using Non-Uniform Cache Architecture (NUCA) are increasingly used to deal with the growing wire delays in multicore/manycore processors. Due to the convergence of high-performance computing with embedded computing, NUCA caches are expected to benefit high-end embedded systems as well. However, for real-time systems that use multicore processors with NUCA caches, it is crucial to bound worst-case execution time (WCET) accurately and safely. In this paper, we developed a WCET analysis approach by considering the effect of static NUCA caches on WCET. We compared the WCET in real-time applications with different topologies of static NUCA caches. Our experimental results demonstrated that the static NUCA cache could improve the worst-case performance of realtime applications using multicore processor compared to the cache with uniform access time.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.259-269
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• 2007

The ubiquitous flexible operating system (UbiFOS) is a real-time operating system designed for cost-conscious, low-power, small to medium-sized embedded systems such as cellular phones, MP3 players, and wearable computers. It offers efficient real-time operating system services like multi-task scheduling, memory management, inter-task communication and synchronization, and timers while keeping the kernel size to just a few to tens of kilobytes. For flexibility, UbiFOS uses various task scheduling policies such as cyclic time-slice (round-robin), priority-based preemption with round-robin, priority-based preemptive, and bitmap. When there are less than 64 tasks, bitmap scheduling is the best policy. The scheduling overhead is under 9 ${\mu}s$ on the ARM926EJ processor. UbiFOS also provides the flexibility for user to select from several inter-task communication techniques according to their applications. We ported UbiFOS on the ARM9-based DVD player (20 kB), the Calm16-based MP3 player (under 7 kB), and the ATmega128-based ubiquitous sensor node (under 6 kB). Also, we adopted the dynamic power management (DPM) scheme. Comparative experimental results show that UbiFOS could save energy up to 30% using DPM.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.717-718
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• 2006

In this paper, we present an RTOS named HEART (Highly Expandable AOP-based Real-Time operating system). It is modularized into a single base and multiple optional features. The base implements a core functionality and each feature implements a specific functionality of RTOS such as interrupt nesting, multithreading, inter-thread communication, and etc. Users can customize HEART just by selecting needed features. Then a specialized version of HEART is automatically generated. We argue that HEART enables the rapid construction of optimized and application-specific RTOSes for diverse embedded systems.

• Transactions on Control, Automation and Systems Engineering
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.181-189
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• 2001

The software components of embedded control systems get extremely complex as they are designed into distributed systems get extremely complex as they are designed into distributed systems consisting of a large number of inexpensive microcontrollers interconnected by low-bandwidth real-time networks such as the controller area network (CAN). While recently emerging middleware technologies such as CORBA and DCOM address the complexity of distributed programming, they cannot be directly applied to distributed control system design due to their excessive resource demand and inadequate communication models. In this paper, we propose a CORBA-based middleware design for CAN-based distributed embedded control systems. Our design goal is to minimize its resource need and make it support group communication without losing the IDL (interface definition language) level compliance to the OMG standards. To achieve this, we develop a transport protocol on the CAN and a group communication scheme based on the well-known publisher/subscriber model. The protocol effectively realizes subject-based addressing and supports anonymous publisher/subscriber communication. We also customize the method invocation and message passing protocol, referred to as the general inter-ORB protocol (GIOP), of CORBA so that CORBA method invocations are efficiently serviced on a low-bandwidth network such as the CAN. This customization includes packed data encoding and variable-length integer encoding for compact representation of IDL data types. We have implemented our CORBA-based middleware on the mArx real-time operating system we have developed at Seoul National University. Our experiments clearly demonstrate that it is feasible to use CORBA in developing distributed embedded control systems possessing severe resource limitations. Our design clearly demonstrates that it is feasible to use a CORBA-based middleware in developing distributed embedded systems on real-time networks possessing severe resource limitations.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.11c
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• pp.438-440
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• 2004

Energy consumption has become an increasingly important consideration in designing real-time embedded systems. In this paper, we propose a voltage scaling method to reduce energy consumption in fixed priority real-time systems using variable voltage processors. The Hyperperiod of tasks is divided into dimains. The most suitable voltage of each domain is determined off-line and stored in a table. During task execution, the voltage of processor is adjusted according to the information of the table. A simulation result shows that the proposed method can reduce 80% of power consumption in comparison to no power management. The difference to the optimal EDF based method is only 5%.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.14D no.1 s.111
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• pp.83-88
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• 2007

In this paper, we introduce MDA based Development Method for Embedded Software Component. This method applies MDA approach to solve problems about reusability of the heterogeneous embedded software system. With our proposed method, we produce 'Target Independent Meta Model'(TIM) which is transformed into 'Target Specific Model'(TSM) and generate 'Target Dependent Code' (TDC) via TSM. We would like to reuse a meta-model to develop heterogeneous embedded software systems. To achieve this mechanism, we extend xUML to solve unrepresented elements (such as real things about concurrency, and real time, etc) on dynamic modeling of the particular system. We introduce 'MDA based Embedded S/W Modeling Tool' with extended XUML. With this tool, we would like to do more easily modeling embedded or concurrent/real time s/w systems. It contains two examples of heterogeneous imbedded systems which illustrate the proposed approach.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.622-629
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• 1999

This paper discusses a real time multi-tasking system model and a development environment for an elevator control system. Recently, as the elevator systems become large-scaled and operate with high speed, there are lots of software tasks to be processed with time constraints. Thus, the control systems are designed with distributed control structure and characteristics of typical real time systems. For stuructural design of such real time system, we introduce a multi-tasking model based on a real time operating system model and an software development environment based on virtual protopyping which simulates real system operation in the cross development of a new elevator system with distributed control structure and its system reliability can be verified through numerous field tests.