• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.77-82
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• 2019

AI is applied increasingly to overall industries such as living, medical, financial service, autonomous car, etc. thanks to rapid technology development. AI-leading countries are strengthening their competency to secure competitiveness since AI is positioned as the core technology in $4^{th}$ Industrial Revolution. Although Korea has the competitive IT infra and human resources, it lags behind traditional AI-leaders like United States, Canada, Japan and, even China which devotes all its might to develop intelligent technology-intentive industry. AI is the critical technology influencing on the national industry in the near future according to advancement of intelligent information society so that concentration of capability is required with national interest. Also, joint development with global AI-leading companies as well as development of own technology are crucial to prevent technology subordination. Additionally, regulatory reform and preparation of related law are very urgent.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.54-61
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• 2023

With the development of IoT technologies and artificial intelligent, diverse digital image equipments are being used in industrial sites. Because image data can be easily damaged by noise while it's obtained with a camera or a sensor and the damaged image has a bad effect on the process of image processing, noise removal is being demanded as preprocessing. In this thesis, for the restoration of image damaged by the noise of random impulse, a switching filter algorithm based on noise estimation was suggested. With the proposed algorithm, noise estimation and error distraction were carried out according to the similarity of the pixel values in the local mask of the image, and a filter was chosen and switched depending on the ratio of noise existing in the local mask. Simulations were conducted to analyze the noise removal performance of the proposed algorithm, and as a result of magnified image and PSNR comparison, it showed superior performance compared to the existing method.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.53-69
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• 2011

Vision and voice-based technologies are commonly utilized for human-robot interaction. But it is widely recognized that the performance of vision and voice-based interaction systems is deteriorated by a large margin in the real-world situations due to environmental and user variances. Human users need to be very cooperative to get reasonable performance, which significantly limits the usability of the vision and voice-based human-robot interaction technologies. As a result, touch screens are still the major medium of human-robot interaction for the real-world applications. To empower the usability of robots for various services, alternative interaction technologies should be developed to complement the problems of vision and voice-based technologies. In this paper, we propose the use of accelerometer-based gesture interface as one of the alternative technologies, because accelerometers are effective in detecting the movements of human body, while their performance is not limited by environmental contexts such as lighting conditions or camera's field-of-view. Moreover, accelerometers are widely available nowadays in many mobile devices. We tackle the problem of classifying acceleration signal patterns of 26 English alphabets, which is one of the essential repertoires for the realization of education services based on robots. Recognizing 26 English handwriting patterns based on accelerometers is a very difficult task to take over because of its large scale of pattern classes and the complexity of each pattern. The most difficult problem that has been undertaken which is similar to our problem was recognizing acceleration signal patterns of 10 handwritten digits. Most previous studies dealt with pattern sets of 8~10 simple and easily distinguishable gestures that are useful for controlling home appliances, computer applications, robots etc. Good features are essential for the success of pattern recognition. To promote the discriminative power upon complex English alphabet patterns, we extracted 'motion trajectories' out of input acceleration signal and used them as the main feature. Investigative experiments showed that classifiers based on trajectory performed 3%~5% better than those with raw features e.g. acceleration signal itself or statistical figures. To minimize the distortion of trajectories, we applied a simple but effective set of smoothing filters and band-pass filters. It is well known that acceleration patterns for the same gesture is very different among different performers. To tackle the problem, online incremental learning is applied for our system to make it adaptive to the users' distinctive motion properties. Our system is based on instance-based learning (IBL) where each training sample is memorized as a reference pattern. Brute-force incremental learning in IBL continuously accumulates reference patterns, which is a problem because it not only slows down the classification but also downgrades the recall performance. Regarding the latter phenomenon, we observed a tendency that as the number of reference patterns grows, some reference patterns contribute more to the false positive classification. Thus, we devised an algorithm for optimizing the reference pattern set based on the positive and negative contribution of each reference pattern. The algorithm is performed periodically to remove reference patterns that have a very low positive contribution or a high negative contribution. Experiments were performed on 6500 gesture patterns collected from 50 adults of 30~50 years old. Each alphabet was performed 5 times per participant using $Nintendo{(R)}$ $Wii^{TM}$ remote. Acceleration signal was sampled in 100hz on 3 axes. Mean recall rate for all the alphabets was 95.48%. Some alphabets recorded very low recall rate and exhibited very high pairwise confusion rate. Major confusion pairs are D(88%) and P(74%), I(81%) and U(75%), N(88%) and W(100%). Though W was recalled perfectly, it contributed much to the false positive classification of N. By comparison with major previous results from VTT (96% for 8 control gestures), CMU (97% for 10 control gestures) and Samsung Electronics(97% for 10 digits and a control gesture), we could find that the performance of our system is superior regarding the number of pattern classes and the complexity of patterns. Using our gesture interaction system, we conducted 2 case studies of robot-based edutainment services. The services were implemented on various robot platforms and mobile devices including $iPhone^{TM}$. The participating children exhibited improved concentration and active reaction on the service with our gesture interface. To prove the effectiveness of our gesture interface, a test was taken by the children after experiencing an English teaching service. The test result showed that those who played with the gesture interface-based robot content marked 10% better score than those with conventional teaching. We conclude that the accelerometer-based gesture interface is a promising technology for flourishing real-world robot-based services and content by complementing the limits of today's conventional interfaces e.g. touch screen, vision and voice.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.185-209
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• 2023

With the advent of the 4th industrial revolution, various technologies have received much attention. Technologies related to the 4th industry include the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, artificial intelligence, virtual reality (VR), 3D printers, and robotics, and these technologies are often converged. In particular, the robotics field is combined with technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, VR, and digital twins. Accordingly, much research using robotics is being conducted, which is applied to distribution, airports, hotels, restaurants, and transportation fields. In the given situation, research on human-robot interaction is attracting attention, but it has not yet reached the level of user satisfaction. However, research on robots capable of perfect communication is steadily being conducted, and it is expected that it will be able to replace human emotional labor. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss whether the current human-robot interaction technology can be applied to business. To this end, this study first examines the trend of human-robot interaction technology. Second, we compare LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic modeling and BERTopic topic modeling methods. As a result, we found that the concept of human-robot interaction and basic interaction was discussed in the studies from 1992 to 2002. From 2003 to 2012, many studies on social expression were conducted, and studies related to judgment such as face detection and recognition were conducted. In the studies from 2013 to 2022, service topics such as elderly nursing, education, and autism treatment appeared, and research on social expression continued. However, it seems that it has not yet reached the level that can be applied to business. As a result of comparing LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic modeling and the BERTopic topic modeling method, it was confirmed that BERTopic is a superior method to LDA.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.503-516
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• 2012

According to the researches of robot and software agent until now, computational emotion model is dependent on system, so it is hard task that emotion models is separated from existing systems and then recycled into new systems. Therefore, I introduce the Engine of computational Emotion model (shall hereafter appear as EE) to integrate with any robots or agents. This is the engine, ie a software for independent form from inputs and outputs, so the EE is Emotion Generation to control only generation and processing of emotions without both phases of Inputs(Perception) and Outputs(Expression). The EE can be interfaced with any inputs and outputs, and produce emotions from not only emotion itself but also personality and emotions of person. In addition, the EE can be existed in any robot or agent by a kind of software library, or be used as a separate system to communicate. In EE, emotions is the Primary Emotions, ie Joy, Surprise, Disgust, Fear, Sadness, and Anger. It is vector that consist of string and coefficient about emotion, and EE receives this vectors from input interface and then sends its to output interface. In EE, each emotions are connected to lists of emotional experiences, and the lists consisted of string and coefficient of each emotional experiences are used to generate and process emotional states. The emotional experiences are consisted of emotion vocabulary understanding various emotional experiences of human. This study EE is available to use to make interaction products to response the appropriate reaction of human emotions. The significance of the study is on development of a system to induce that person feel that product has your sympathy. Therefore, the EE can help give an efficient service of emotional sympathy to products of HRI, HCI area.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.64-69
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• 2007

Motion control of the system is a position control of motor. Motion control of an uncertain robot system is considered as one of the most important and fundamental research directions in the robotics. Some distinguished works using linear control, adaptive control, robust control strategies based on computed torque methodology have been reported. However, it is generally recognized within the control community that these strategies suffer from the following problems : the exact robot dynamics are needed and hard to implement, the adaptive control cannot guarantee the performance during the transient period for adaptation under the variation, the robust control algorithms such as the sliding mode control need information on the bounds of the possible uncertainty and disturbance. And it produces a large control input as well. In this dissertation, a motion control for the unmanned intelligent robot system using disturbance observer is studied. This system is affected with an impact vibration disturbance. This paper describes a stable motion control of the system with the consideration of external disturbance. To obtain the stable motion independently against the external disturbance, the disturbance rejection is strongly required. To address the above issue, this paper presents a Disturbance OBserver(DOB) control algorithm. The validity of the suggested DOB robust control scheme is confirmed by several computer simulation results. And the experiments with a motor system is performed to give the validity of applicability in the industrial field. This results make the easier implementation of the controller possible in the field.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.211-227
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• 2023

Personal service robots, a type of social robot that has emerged with the aging population and technological advancements, are undergoing a transformation centered around technologies that can extend independent living for older adults in their homes. For older adults to accept and use social robot innovations in their daily lives on a long-term basis, it is crucial to have a deeper understanding of user perspectives, contexts, and emotions. This research aims to comprehensively understand older adults by utilizing a mixed-method approach that integrates quantitative and qualitative data. Specifically, we employ the Van Kaam phenomenological methodology to group conversations into nine categories based on emotional cues and conversation participants as key variables, using voice conversation records between older adults and social robots. We then personalize the conversations based on frequency and weight, allowing for user segmentation. Additionally, we conduct profiling analysis using demographic data and health indicators obtained from pre-survey questionnaires. Furthermore, based on the analysis of conversations, we perform K-means cluster analysis to classify older adults into three groups and examine their respective characteristics. The proposed model in this study is expected to contribute to the growth of businesses related to understanding users and deriving insights by providing a methodology for segmenting older adult s, which is essential for the future provision of social robots with caregiving functions in everyday life.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.142-148
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• 2003

Reinforcement learning is considered as an important tool for robotic learning in unknown/uncertain environments. In this paper, we propose an evaluation function expressed in a vector form to realize multi-dimensional reinforcement learning. The novel feature of the proposed method is that learning one behavior induces parallel learning of other behaviors though the objectives of each behavior are different. In brief, all behaviors watch other behaviors from a critical point of view. Therefore, in the proposed method, there is cross-criticism and parallel learning that make the multi-dimensional learning process more efficient. By ap-plying the proposed learning method, we carried out multi-dimensional evaluation (reward) and multi-dimensional learning simultaneously in one trial. A special neural network (Q-net), in which the weights and the output are represented by vectors, is proposed to realize a critic net-work for Q-learning. The proposed learning method is applied for behavior planning of mobile robots.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.552-557
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• 2004

This paper presents a disturbance observer based on an $H_{\infty}$ controller synthesis for the trajectory control of a hydraulic excavator. Compared to conventional robot manipulators driven by electrical motors, the hydraulic excavator has more nonlinear and coupled dynamics. In particular, the interactions between an excavation tool and the materials being excavated are unstructured and complex. In addition, its operating modes depend on working conditions, which make it difficult to not only derive the exact mathematical model but also design a controller systematically. In this study, the approximated linear model obtained through off-line system identification is used as nominal plant model for a disturbance observer. A disturbance observer based tracking controller which considers the effect of disturbance and model uncertainty is synthesized in $H_{\infty}$ frameworks. Simulation results are used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed control scheme.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.313-321
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• 2017

One of the most frequently performed tasks in human-robot interaction (HRI), intelligent vehicles, and security systems is face related applications such as face recognition, facial expression recognition, driver state monitoring, and gaze estimation. In these applications, accurate head pose estimation is an important issue. However, conventional methods have been lacking in accuracy, robustness or processing speed in practical use. In this paper, we propose a novel method for estimating head pose with a monocular camera. The proposed algorithm is based on a deep neural network for multi-task learning using a small grayscale image. This network jointly detects multi-view faces and estimates head pose in hard environmental conditions such as illumination change and large pose change. The proposed framework quantitatively and qualitatively outperforms the state-of-the-art method with an average head pose mean error of less than $4.5^{\circ}$ in real-time.