• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.55-60
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• 2010

Rodents can recognize objects by using their whiskers. Not only rodents but also mammals use their whiskers to recognize objects. However, rodents can discriminate surface roughness in micrometer resolution throughout their whisker sensing. Rats can distinguish an target object's shape, roughness and surface pattern by moving their whisker back and forth freely. Mechanoreceptors surrounding the whisker in their follicle measure deflection and vibration of the whisker. In this paper, we designed biomimetic whiskers modeling rodent whiskers and showed the characteristic properties to extract the information of surface roughness.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.324-329
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• 2022

This paper proposes a shift-register-based multichannel ultrasonic focusing delay control method using a complex programmable logic device (CPLD) for a high resolution of ultrasonic focusing system. The proposed method can achieve the ultrasonic focusing through the delay control of driving signals of each ultrasonic transducer of an ultrasonic array. The delay of the driving signals of all ultrasonic channels can be controlled by setting the shift register in the CPLD. The experiment verified that the frequency of the clock used for the delay control increased, the error of the focusing point decreased, and the diameter of the focusing point decreased as the length of the shift register in the proposed method. The proposed method used only one CPLD for ultrasonic focusing and did not require to use complex hardware circuits. Therefore, the resources required for the design of an ultrasonic focusing system could be reduced. The proposed method can be applied to the fields of human computer interaction (HCI), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.29 no.2 s.233
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• pp.188-200
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• 2005

Control of a multi-fingered robotic hand is usually based on the theoretical analysis for kinematics and dynamics of fingers and of object. However, the implementation of such analyses to robotic hands is difficult because of errors and uncertainties in the real situations. This article presents the control method for estimating the kinematic constraint of an unknown object by active sensing. The experimental system has a two-fingered robotic hand suspended vertically for manipulation in the vertical plane. The fingers with three degrees-of-freedom are driven by wires directly connected to voice-coil motors without reduction gears. The fingers are equipped with three-axis force sensors and with dynamic tactile sensors that detect slippage between the fingertip surfaces and the object. In order to make an accurate estimation for the kinematic constraint of the unknown object, i.e. the constraint direction and the constraint center, four kinds of the active sensing and feedback control algorithm were developed: two position-based algorithms and two force-based algorithms. Furthermore, the compound and effective algorithm was also developed by combining two algorithms. Force sensors are mainly used to adapt errors and uncertainties encountered during the constraint estimation. Several experimental results involving the motion of lifting a finger off an unknown object are presented.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.509-517
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• 2021

Smart materials capable of changing their characteristics in response to stimuli such as light, heat, pH, and electric and magnetic fields are promising for application to flexible electronics, soft robotics, and biomedicine. Compared with conventional rigid materials, these materials are typically composed of soft materials that improve the biocompatibility and allow for large and dynamic deformations in response to external environmental stimuli. Among them, smart magnetic materials are attracting immense attention owing to their fast response, remote actuation, and wide penetration range under various conditions. In this review, we report the material design and fabrication of smart magnetic materials. Furthermore, we focus on recent advances in their typical applications, namely, soft magnetic actuators, sensors for self-assembly, object manipulation, shape transformation, multimodal robot actuation, and tactile sensing.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 2024

Soft-pressure sensors have numerous applications in soft robotics, biomedical devices, and wearable smart devices. Herein, we present a highly sensitive electronic skin device with an isotropic wrinkled pressure sensor. A conductive ink for soft pressure sensors is produced by a solution process using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), poly 3-hexylthiophene (P3HT), carbon black, and chloroform as the solvents. P3HT provides high reproducibility and conductivity by improving the ink dispersibility. The conductivity of the ink is optimized by adjusting the composition of the carbon black and PDMS. Soft lithography is used to fabricate a conductive elastic structure with an isotropic wrinkled structure. Two conductive elastic structures with an isotropic wrinkle structure is stacked to develop a pressure sensor, and it is confirmed that the isotropic wrinkle structure is more sensitive to pressure than when two elastic structures with an anisotropic wrinkle structure are overlapped. Specifically, the pressure sensor fabricated with an isotropic wrinkled structure can detect extremely low pressures (1.25 Pa). Additionally, the sensor has a high sensitivity of 15.547 kpa^-1 from 1.25 to 2500 Pa and a linear sensitivity of 5.15 kPa^-1 from 2500 Pa to 25 kPa.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.11c
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• pp.107-109
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• 2004

In this paper, authors propose the sensor fusion system that can recognize multiple 3D objects from 2D projection images and tactile information. The proposed system focuses on improving recognition performance of 3D object. Unlike the conventional object recognition system that uses image sensor alone, the proposed method uses tactual sensors in addition to visual sensor. Neural network is used to fuse these informations. Tactual signals are obtained from the reaction force by the pressure sensors at the fingertips when unknown objects are grasped by four-fingered robot hand. The experiment evaluates the recognition rate and the number of teaming iterations of various objects. The merits of the proposed systems are not only the high performance of the learning ability but also the reliability of the system with tactual information for recognizing various objects even though visual information has a defect. The experimental results show that the proposed system can improve recognition rate and reduce learning time. These results verify the effectiveness of the proposed sensor fusion system as recognition scheme of 3D object.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.156-165
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• 2005

Human being recognizes the physical world by integrating a great variety of sensory inputs, the information acquired by their own action, and their knowledge of the world using hierarchically parallel-distributed mechanism. In this paper, authors propose the sensor fusion system that can recognize multiple 3D objects from 2D projection images and tactile informations. The proposed system focuses on improving recognition performance of 3D objects. Unlike the conventional object recognition system that uses image sensor alone, the proposed method uses tactual sensors in addition to visual sensor. Neural network is used to fuse the two sensory signals. Tactual signals are obtained from the reaction force of the pressure sensors at the fingertips when unknown objects are grasped by four-fingered robot hand. The experiment evaluates the recognition rate and the number of learning iterations of various objects. The merits of the proposed systems are not only the high performance of the learning ability but also the reliability of the system with tactual information for recognizing various objects even though the visual sensory signals get defects. The experimental results show that the proposed system can improve recognition rate and reduce teeming time. These results verify the effectiveness of the proposed sensor fusion system as recognition scheme for 3D objects.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.314-321
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• 2005

In this paper an intelligence embedding quadruped pet robot is described. It has 15 degrees of freedom and consists of various sensors such as CMOS image, voice recognition and sound localization, inclinometer, thermistor, real-time clock, tactile touch, PIR and IR to allows owners to interact with pet robot according to human's intention as well as the original features of pet animals. The architecture is flexible and adopts various embedded processors for handling sensors to provide modular structure. The pet robot is also used for additional purpose such like security, gaming visual tracking, and research platform. It is possible to generate various actions and behaviors and to download voice or music files to maintain a close relation of users. With cost-effective sensor, the pet robot is able to find its recharge station and recharge itself when its battery runs low. To facilitate programming of the robot, we support several development environments. Therefore, the developed system is a low-cost programmable entertainment robot platform.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.251-255
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• 2003

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and calibration of a piezoelectric polymer-based sensorized microgripper. Electro discharge machining technology is employed to fabricate super-elastic alloy based micro gripper. It is tested to present improvement of mechanical performance. For integration of force sensor on the micro gripper, the sensor design based on the piezoelectric polymer PVDF film and fabrication process are presented. The calibration and performance test of force sensor integrated micro gripper are experimentally carried out. The force sensor integrated micro gripper is applied to perform fine alignment tasks of micro opto-electrical components. It successfully supplies force feedback to the operator through the haptic device and plays a main role in preventing damage of assembly parts by adjusting the teaching command.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.167-172
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose a new approach to design and control a smart gripper of robot system. A control method for flexible grasping a object in partially unknown environment was proposed, where a proximate sensor detecting the distance between the fingertip and object was used. Based on the proximate sensor signal the finger motion controller could plan the grasping process divided in three phases. The first step is scanning process which two first joints were moved to mid-position of the detected range by a state-variable feedback position controller, after the scanning was finished. The contact force of fingertip was then controlled using the detection sensor of the servo controller for finger joint control. The proposed grasping planning was tested on rectangular bar.