• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.439-446
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• 2014

An amphibious inspection robot system (hereafter AIROS) is being developed to visually inspect the in-containment refueling storage water tank (hereafter IRWST) strainer in APR1400 instead of a human diver. Four IRWST strainers are located in the IRWST, which is filled with boric acid water. Each strainer has 108 sub-assembly strainer fin modules that should be inspected with the VT-3 method according to Reg. guide 1.82 and the operation manual. AIROS has 6 thrusters for submarine voyage and 4 legs for walking on the top of the strainer. An inverse kinematic algorithm was implemented in the robot controller for exact walking on the top of the IRWST strainer. The IRWST strainer has several top cross braces that are extruded on the top of the strainer, which can be obstacles of walking on the strainer, to maintain the frame of the strainer. Therefore, a robot leg should arrive at the position beside the top cross brace. For this reason, we used an image processing technique to find the top cross brace in the sole camera image. The sole camera image is processed to find the existence of the top cross brace using the cross edge detection algorithm in real time. A 5-DOF robot arm that has multiple camera modules for simultaneous inspection of both sides can penetrate narrow gaps. For intuitive presentation of inspection results and for management of inspection data, inspection images are stored in the control PC with camera angles and positions to synthesize and merge the images. The synthesized images are then mapped in a 3D CAD model of the IRWST strainer with the location information. An IRWST strainer mock-up was fabricated to teach the robot arm scanning and gaiting. It is important to arrive at the designated position for inserting the robot arm into all of the gaps. Exact position control without anchor under the water is not easy. Therefore, we designed the multi leg robot for the role of anchoring and positioning. Quadruped robot design of installing sole cameras was a new approach for the exact and stable position control on the IRWST strainer, unlike a traditional robot for underwater facility inspection. The developed robot will be practically used to enhance the efficiency and reliability of the inspection of nuclear power plant components.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to examine how rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS), one of music therapy techniques for neurological rehabilitation, affects the factors of hemiplegia patients' turning gait and straight gait. This study is designed to compare elimination and intervention of music therapy for 4 weeks with repeated measure plan and measure factors are classified into 21 sub-factors. The subjects of this study were 4 patients who need walking training and they were requested by physical therapist a march and a lied were used to cure them by a researcher. Each session was composed of warming up, RAS gait training, ending. The music used for RAS gait training was provided with speed which was set to patient's own gait speed measured before music therapy. The speed was provided fast gradually and each session was proceeded for 50 minutes. The results of this study showed that walking abilities increase in the segments with music therapy (B) compared to those in the segment without music therapy (A), and this supports the previous report that the application of music therapy together with other treatments has a positive effect on improvement in the patient's walking abilities. In addition, this study is meaningful in that it demonstrated that RAS music therapy is helpful to improve walking abilities not only in straight gait but also in turning gait.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.667-673
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• 2010

This paper proposes a control method based on a pseudo-impedance model to control the motion of biped robots walking on an uneven surface. The pseudo-impedance model simulates the action of the ankle of a foot landing on the ground when a human walks. When the foot is in contact with the ground, the human ankle goes through two different phases. In the first phase, the human exerts little or no effort and applies no torque on the ankle so that the orientation of the foot is effortlessly and passively adjusted with respect to the ground. In the second phase of landing, the ankle generates a significant amount of torque in order to rotate and move the main part of the human body forward and to support the weight of the human; this phase is called the weight acceptance phase. Computer simulations of a 12-DOF biped robot with a 6-DOF environment model were performed to determine the effectiveness of the proposed pseudo-impedance control. The simulation results show that stable locomotion can be achieved on an irregular surface by using the proposed model.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.687-697
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• 2017

To figure out an appropriate pressure level for a body warming base layer, human responses were observed when the pattern reduction of base layers varied. Under the condition of $2^{\circ}C$, 60% RH, 0.1m/s, ten male subjects participated in the experiment with four sizes of experimental vests where heating pads were attached. The subjective evaluations of the heating vests with different sizes were reported using 7 or 9 point scales. We simultaneously observed chest, abdomen and scapula skin temperatures and microclimate humidity. It was found that the tight pattern as in the case of A or B provided a warmer subjective sensation and skin temperature than C or D; however, there were no differences in skin temperature at the chest. Eventually, the chest temperature decreased after about 30 mins of heating; however, temperature of abdomen increased and indicated that heating with two commercial pads used was inadequate for whole body warming. The pressure sensation of 'tight' was improved after warming the abdomen in a cold environment. Overall, the gaps beyond the original circumference of the abdomen, as in C or D, were not desirable for the local heating of abdomen under the conditions of this experiment where walking was included in the protocol. The experiment garment B with nude waist circumference was the best, and D with the largest ease, was the worst for a comfortable warming vest.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.12-22
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• 2012

Today we are witnessing an increasingly widespread use of cameras in our lives for video surveillance, robot vision, and mobile phones. This has led to a renewed interest in computer vision in general and an on-going boom in human activity recognition in particular. Although not particularly fancy per se, human gait is inarguably the most common and frequent action. Early on this decade there has been a passing interest in human gait recognition, but it soon declined before we came up with a systematic analysis and understanding of walking motion. This paper presents a set of DBN-based models for the analysis of human gait in sequence of increasing complexity and modeling power. The discussion centers around HMM-based statistical methods capable of modeling the variability and incompleteness of input video signals. Finally a novel idea of extending the discrete state Markov chain with a continuous density function is proposed in order to better characterize the gait direction. The proposed modeling framework allows us to recognize pedestrian up to 91.67% and to elegantly decode out two independent gait components of direction and posture through a sequence of experiments.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.398-407
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• 2017

BTG 1 (B-cell translocation gene 1) gene was first identified as a translocation gene in a case of B-cell chronic lympocytic leukemia. BTG1 is a member of the BTG/TOB family with sharing a conserved N-terminal region, which shows anti-proliferation properties and is able to stimulate cell differentiation. In this study, we identified and characterized the pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas BTG1 (cg-BTG1) gene from the gill cDNA library by an Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) analysis and its nucleotide sequence was determined. The cg-BTG1 gene encodes a predicted protein of 182 amino acids with 57% 56% identities to its zebrafish and human counterparts, and is an intron-less gene, which was confirmed by PCR analysis of genomic DNA. Maximal homologies were shown in conserved Box A and B. The deduced amino acid sequence shares high identity with other BTG1 genes of human, rat, mouse and zebrafish. The phylogenic analysis and sequence comparison of cg-BTG1 with other BTG1 were found to be closely related to the BTG1 gene structure. In addition, the predicted promoter region and the different transcription-factor binding site like an activator protein-1 (AP-1) response element involved in negative regulation and serum response element (SRE) were able to be identified by the genomic DNA walking experiment. The quantitative real-time PCR analysis showed that the mRNA of cg-BTG1 gene was expressed in gill, heart, digestive gland, intestine, stomach and mantle. The cg-BTG1 gene was expressed mainly in heart and mantle.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.518-523
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• 2015

This paper proposes a gait phase classifier using a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). Walking is a type of dynamic system, and as such it seems that the classifier made by using a general feed forward neural network structure is not appropriate. It is known that an RNN is suitable to model a dynamic system. Because the proposed RNN is simple, we use a back propagation algorithm to train the weights of the network. The input data of the RNN is the lower body's joint angles and angular velocities which are acquired by using the lower limb exoskeleton robot, ROBIN-H1. The classifier categorizes a gait cycle as two phases, swing and stance. In the experiment for performance verification, we compared the proposed method and general feed forward neural network based method and showed that the proposed method is superior.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.363.2-363.2
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• 2016

Stretchable strain sensors are becoming essential in diverse future applications, such as human motion detection, soft robotics, and various biomedical devices. One of the well-known approaches for fabricating stretchable strain sensors is to embed conductive nanomaterials such as metal nanowires/nanoparticles, graphene, conducting polymer and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within an elastomeric substrate. Among various conducting nanomaterials, CNTs have been considered as important and promising candidate materials for stretchable strain sensors owing to their high electrical conductivity and excellent mechanical properties. In the past decades, CNT-based strain sensors with high stretchability or sensitivity have been developed. However, CNT-based strain sensors which show both high stretchability and sensitivity have not been reported. Herein, highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensors were fabricated by integrating single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and nylon textiles via vacuum-assisted spray-layer-by-layer process. Our strain sensors had high sensitivity with 100 % tensile strain (gauge factor ~ 100). Cyclic tests confirmed that our strain sensors showed very robust and reliable characteristic. Moreover, our SWNTs-based strain sensors were easily and successfully integrated on human finger and knee to detect bending and walking motion. Our approach presented here might be route to preparing highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensors with providing new opportunity to realize practical wearable devices.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.1167-1172
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• 2007

This study investigates human floor impact sounds; not only the children's jumping and running represented by heavy-weight impact source such as bang machine and impact ball but also the high-heel walking and the light weight object dropping represented by tapping machine in the standard measurements. However, due to reliability problems as a standard impactor, bang machine has not been included in the new draft of ISO 10140 Part 3: Measurement of impact sound insulation. Therefore, the procedure to convert the floor impact sound level of the bang machine into that of the impact ball has been demanded because the bang machine has been only the standard heavy-weight standard impact source and much of its data has been collected, This study indicates that the use of impact ball is reliable and that the bang machine data can be successfully converted into the impact ball data in case of box-frame type reinforced concrete structures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.1065-1072
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• 2015

This paper is about the development of an insole sensor system that can determine the model of an exoskeleton robot for lower limb that is a multi-degree of freedom system. First, the study analyzed the kinematic model of an exoskeleton robot for the lower limb that changes according to the gait phase detection of a human. Based on the ground reaction force (GRF), which is generated when walking, to proceed with insole sensor development, the sensing type, location, and the number of sensors were selected. The center of pressure (COP) of the human foot was understood first, prior to the development of algorithm. Using the COP, an algorithm was developed that is capable of detecting the gait phase with small number of sensors. An experiment at 3 km/h speed was conducted on the developed sensor system to evaluate the developed insole sensor system and the gait phase detection algorithm.