• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.117-125
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• 2018

The primary objectives of this study are to develop a detail design of automated PHC pile head cutting machine and structural stability analysis of detail design that improves the conventional head cutting work in safety, quality, and productivity. For this, the following research works are conducted sequentially; 1)literature review and field study, 2)expert survey and interview, 3)selection of core technology using AHP analysis, 4)deduction of detail design 5) verification of structural stability. As an outcome, it is analyzed that gripper and gripper bearing shaft are structurally stable. Their maximum stresses are shown as 15.93%, 10.58% compared to their yield strength respectively. The results of detail design and structural stability analysis in this study will be utilized for the actual development of the automated PHC pile cutting machine prototype.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2014

Oriental melon (Cucumis melo var. makuwa) should be cultivated on the soil and be harvested. It is difficult to find because it is covered with leaves, and furthermore, it is very hard to grip it due to its climbing stems. This study developed and tested oriental melon harvesting robots such as an end-effector, manipulator and identification device. The end effector is divided into a gripper for harvest and a cutter for stems. In addition, it was designed to control the gripping and cutting forces so that the gripper could move four fingers at the same time and the cutter could move back and forth. The manipulator was designed to realize a 4-axis manipulator structure to combine orthogonal coordinate-type and shuttle-type manipulators with L-R type model to rotate based on the central axis. With regard to the identification device, oriental melon was identified using the primary identification global view camera device and secondary identification local view camera device and selected in the prediction of the sugar content or maturity. As a result of the performance test using this device, the average harvest time was 18.2 sec/ea, average pick-up rate was 91.4%, average damage rate was 8.2% and average sorting rate was 72.6%.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.215-220
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• 2017

This study was conducted to improve the insufficiency of fruit vegetable grafting system developed by National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration. When the rotary blade cut the stem of scions and rootstocks, the grafting failure at curved cutting surfaces happened. The cutting depth of a tomato seedling by a rotated cutter was calculated 0.11 mm even when the cutting arm length and the maximum stem diameter were 50 mm and 5 mm, respectively. Mathematical analysis and high-speed photography showed that there was no problem by cutting in straight the stem of scions and rootstocks. The compression test of seedling stems to design the optimal shape of gripper showed that stems were not completely restored when they were compressed above 0.8 mm and 0.6 mm in case of rootstocks and scion, respectively. This study found that the bending angle of stem of tomato seedlings at the grafting period was 10 degree on average. The optimal gripper finger was the edge finger type which could be precisely set center point by adjusting the distance between fingers. In addition, it was found that most of seedling could be grasped without damage when the finger-to-finger distances is set to 2.5 mm for scion and 3.0 mm for rootstocks and finger are coated by 1 mm-thick flexible material.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.49-55
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• 2022

The role of drones has been expanded to various fields such as agriculture, construction, and logistics. In particular, agriculture drones are emerging as an effective alternative to solve the problem of labor shortage and reduce the input cost. In this study therefore, we proposed the fruit recognition algorithm and harvesting mechanism for fruit harvesting drone system that can safely harvest fruits at high positions. In the fruit recognition algorithm, we employ "You-Only-Look-Once" which is a deep learning-based object detection algorithm and verify its feasibility by establishing a virtual simulation environment. In addition, we propose the fruit harvesting mechanism which can be operated by a single driving motor. The rotational motion of the motor is converted into a linear motion by the scotch yoke, and the opened gripper moves forward, grips a fruit and rotates it for harvesting. The feasibility of the proposed mechanism is verified by performing Multi-body dynamics analysis.

• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.69-74
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• 2024

Soft actuators can be applied to various fields such as the medical industry and manufacturing industry due to the flexibility and smooth movement resulted from their constituent materials. Stimuli-responsive hydrogels are a class of materials that can show large volume changes due to various surrounding stimuli and thus is suitable as a soft actuator material. However, because the change in volume of the stimuli-responsive hydrogel depends on the rate of temperature change and the rate at which the solvent diffuses into the polymer network, in most typical operating conditions, the response time of the actuator is slow due to inefficient heat transfer and diffusion process. In this study, a conjugated polymer was introduced into polydiethylacrylamide, a thermoresponsive hydrogel, to implement a soft actuator driven by light, and the improvement in response time by the photothermal effect of the conjugated polymer was investigated. It was confirmed that the response time was improved by 41% by the introduction of the conjugated polymer, due to the improvement in heat transfer efficiency. Finally, a soft gripper using the hydrogel with improved response time was fabricated and the response time of the gripper was investigated.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.155-162
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• 2009

A main distributing frame(MDF) is an interface unit that is used to connect office equipment cables in a telephone company to subscriber cables. Until now, there is no automated switching system for MDFs in Korea. Manual handling of an MDF has some drawbacks; It is time-consuming, very cumbersome, and expensive. It also makes maintenance hard. An automated main distributing frame system is proposed and commercialized in Japan. In that system, a robot gripper inserts connecting pins into the cross point holes of a matrix board, which reveals several disadvantages in the aspects of space, maintenance, fault tolerance, and economical efficiency. This paper describes a newly developed robotic switch board system for MDFs. In the developed system, switches are placed at the cross point of a matrix board. There is one robot in between two switch units, so one robot deals with two switch units. In the system, positioning the robot, opening and closing switches can be done by using only a pair of motors and a pair of solenoids. The newly developed system is compact in size, reduces cost, and shows high reliability.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.461-468
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• 2005

This paper proposes a wheel-assembly automation system, which assembles a wheel into a hub of a vehicle hung to a moving hanger in a car manufacturing line. A macro-micro manipulator control strategy is introduced to increase the system bandwidth and tracking accuracy to ensure insertion tolerance. A camera is equipped at the newly designed wheel gripper, which is attached at the center of the end-effector of the macro-micro manipulator and is used to measure position error of the hub of the vehicle in real time. The redundancy problem in the macro-micro manipulator is solved without complicated calculation by assigning proper functions to each part so that the macro part tracks the velocity error while the micro part regulates the fine position error. Experimental results indicate that tracking error satisfies the insertion tolerance of assembly $({\pm}1mm)$, and thus it is verified that the proposed system can be applied to the wheel assembly task on a moving hanger in the manufacturing line.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2012

Purpose: An autonomous robot was developed for harvesting strawberries cultivated in bench-type systems. Methods: The harvest robot consisted of four main components: an autonomous vehicle, a manipulator with four degrees of freedom (DOF), an end effector with two DOFs, and a color computer vision system. Strawberry detection was performed based on 3D image and distance information obtained from a stereo CCD color camera and a laser device, respectively. Results: In this work, a Cartesian type manipulator system was designed, including an intermediate revolute axis and a double driven arm-based joint axis, so that it could generate collision-free motions during harvesting. A DC servomotor-driven end-effector, consisting of a gripper and a cutter, was designed for gripping and cutting the strawberry stem without damaging the strawberry itself. Real-time position tracking algorithms were developed to detect, recognize, trace, and approach strawberries under natural light conditions. Conclusion: The developed robot system could harvest a strawberry within 7 seconds without damage.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.615-618
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• 2005

All over the world, many kinds of micro-actuators were already developed for various applications. The actuators are using various principles such as electromagnetic, piezoelectric and thermopneumatic etc. The most of the micro-actuators have been made using 2D based MEMS technology. In these actuators, it is difficult to drive 3-dimensional motion. This characteristic gives the limit of actuator application. However, micro-stereolithography technology has made it possible to fabricate freeform three-dimensional microstructures. In this technology, 2-dimensional micro-shape layer is cumulated on the other layers. This layer-by-layer process is the main principle to fabricate 3-dimensioal micro-structures. In this research, a micro-bellows actuator that is vertically moving was developed using the micro-stereolithography technology. When pressure was applied into the bellows, a non-contact actuating motion is generated. For actuation experiment, syringe pump and laser interferometer were used for applying pressure and measuring the displacement. Several hundreds micro-scale actuation was observed. And, to demonstrate the feasibility of proposed actuation principle, in this research, a micro-gripper was developed using half-bellows structure.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.180-193
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• 2020

In this study, the end-effector tracking performance of a manipulator installed on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for autonomous underwater intervention is verified. The underwater manipulator is an ARM 7E MINI model produced by the ECA group, which consists of six joints and one gripper. Of the six joints of the manipulator, two are revolute joints and the other four are prismatic joints. Velocity control is used to control the manipulator with forward and inverse kinematics. When the manipulator approaches a target object, it is difficult for the ROV to maintain its position and posture, owing to various disturbances, such as the variation in both the center of mass and the reaction force resulting from the manipulator motion. Therefore, it is necessary to compensate for the influences and ensure the relative distance to the object. Simulations and experiments are performed to track the trajectory of a virtual object, and the tracking performance is verified from the results.