The global ultrasonic system for the self-localization of a mobile robot consists of several ultrasonic transmitters fixed at some reference positions in the global coordinates of robot environment. By activating the ultrasonic transmitters, the mobile robot is able to get the distance to the ultrasonic transmitters and compute its own position in the global coordinate. Due to the limitation on the ultrasonic signal strength and beam width as well as the environmental obstacles however, the ultrasonic signals from some generator may not be transmitted to the robot. Thus, instead of activating the all ultrasonic transmitters, it is necessary to select some ultrasonic generators to activate based on the current robot position. In this paper, we propose a selective activation algorithm for self-localization with the global ultrasonic system. The selective activation algorithm gets the meaningful ultrasonic data at every sampling instants, which results in the faster and more accurate response of the self-localization than the conventional sequential activation. Through the self-localization and path following control, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed selective activation algorithm.

Indoor positioning is highlighted recently, and various kinds of indoor positioning systems are under developments. Since positioning systems have their own characteristics, proper positioning scheme should be chosen according to the required specifications. Positioning methods are classified into time-based and angle-based one. This paper presents the error analysis of time-based and angle-based location methods. Because measurements of these methods are nonlinear, linearizations are needed in both cases to estimate the user position. In the linearization, Gauss-Newton method is used in both cases. To analyze the position error, we investigate the error ellipse parameters that include eccentricity, rotation angle, and the size of ellipse. Simulation results show that the major axes of TOA and AOA method lie in different quadrants at most region of workspace, especially where the geometry is poor. When the TOA/AOA hybrid is employed, it is found that the error ellipse is reduced to the intersection of ellipses of TOA and AOA.

We are moving into the era of ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) is a base of such computing paradigm, where recognizing the identification and the position of objects is important. For the object identification, RFID tags are commonly used. For the object positioning, use of sensors such as laser and ultrasonic scanners is popular. Recently, there have been a few attempts to apply RFID technology in robot localization by replacing the sensors with RFID readers to achieve simpler and unified USN settings. However, RFID does not provide enough sensing accuracy for some USN applications such as robot navigation, mainly because of its inaccuracy in distance measurements. In this paper, we describe our approach on achieving accurate navigation using RFID. We solely rely on RFID mechanism for the localization by providing coordinate information through RFID tag installed floors. With the accurate positional information stored in the RFID tag, we complement coordinate errors accumulated during the wheel based robot navigation. We especially focus on how to distribute RFID tags (tag pattern) and how many to place (tag granularity) on the RFID tag-floor. To determine efficient tag granularities and tag patterns, we developed a simulation program. We define the error in navigation and use it to compare the effectiveness of the navigation. We analyze the simulation results to determine the efficient granularities and tag arrangement patterns that can improve the effectiveness of RFID navigation in general.

This paper shows a feasibility analysis results on RFID for car positioning system. Usually, a car navigation is mainly based on GPS combined with map-matching. However, in the case of poor visibility of satellites, GPS can not supply accurate position information continuously. In recent years, RFID has been considered to be one of key technologies in positioning and localization area. But its application and research results in the area of vehicular positioning are not popular. RFID system consists of tag, reader, antenna and software such as drivers and middleware. The main function of RFID system in a vehicular positioning is to retrieve ID recorded position information from tags which set on the center of road. We propose a positioning method for vehicles using RFID and we present some indoor and outdoor experiment results to show that the proposed method is available in vehicle operational environments.

The errors of INS (Inertial Navigation System) are known to grow in time. To compensate the accumulated errors, measurements of external or onboard sensors are extensively utilized to form an integrated navigation system. Recently, INS/GPS integrated navigation systems have become popular since exact position and velocity information can be utilized by low cost GPS receivers. Unfortunately, this configuration cannot be trusted at all times especially when there are intentional or unexpected jammings and interruptions. To aid INS irrespectively of these cases, an INS/Image sensor integrated navigation system configuration is designed only based on the information of image sensor gimble angles. The performance of the INS/Image sensor integrated navigation system is evaluated by Monte Carlo simulation.

This paper shows that the OFDM(Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex) system is robust to multipath than CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) system and it has a strong possibility to be utilized as a supplementing wireless location system for the forthcoming portable internet network. The OFDM system based on IEEE 802.16e is a wireless TDD (Time Division Duplex) OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) system providing portable internet services in 2.3 GHz frequency band and is scheduled in service in Korea starting in 2006. In this paper, multipath error is calculated using a two-ray model and compared with that of a CDMA system which is following IS-95. The OFDM system shows a maximum multipath error of 3 m while a CDMA system shows a maximum multipath error of 61 m. For this simulation, an early-late technique is used. This technique is usually used to match synchronization of signal in DLL(Delay Lock Loop).

This paper proposes an ultrasonic location system based on the spread spectrum principle. Though there are several conventional ultrasonic systems, the proposed system is the first one that combines spread spectrum and amplitude modulation principles. The proposed ultrasonic location system is advantageous in that it can improve positioning accuracy and detection sensitivity by the spread spectrum principle, it simplifies transmitter and receiver circuits, and it is easy to upgrade its performance by modifying only the software functionalities. By several real data experiments, the advantage and performance of the proposed location system is demonstrated.

In this paper, a lateral vehicle control using the concept of control configured vehicle(CCV) is presented. The control objectives for the lateral dynamics of a vehicle include the ability to commend a chosen variable without significant motion change in other specified variables. The analysis techniques fur decoupling of the aircraft motions are utilized to develop vehicle lateral control with advanced mode. Vehicle lateral dynamic is determined to have the steering input and control torque input. The additional vehicle modes are also defined to using CCV concept. We use right eigenstructure assignment techniques and command generator tracker to design a control law for an lateral vehicle dynamics. The desired eigenvectors are chosen to achieve the desired decoupling(i.e., lateral direction speed and yaw rate). The command generator tracker is used to ensure steady-state tracking of the driver's command. Finally, the developed design is utilized by using the lateral vehicle dynamic with four wheel.

By breaking the symmetry of the velocity profile in the S-curve, we developed a fast starting and smooth ending motion profile, named asymmetric S-curve(AS-curve). The problem for generating motion profile is formulated, and the algorithm for the AS-curve is derived and the flow chart of the AS-curve is illustrated. By various simulations, the derived algorithm is tested and shows the validity. This AS-curve can be applied to the high precision machines where fast and vibrationless motion is required in the near future.

This paper presents an LMI-based method to design sliding mode observers for a class of uncertain time-delay systems. Using LMIs we derive an existence condition of a sliding mode observer guaranteeing a stable sliding motion. And we give explicit formulas of the observer gain matrices. Finally, we give a simple LMI-based design algorithm, togeter with a numerical design example.

A portable ECG sensor module and monitoring system which has the powerline noise reduction and the baseline wander removal is proposed. A small-szie ECG sensor H/W module with the 8-bits microprocessor is implemented. The ECG waveform can be inspected anytime with PDA in real time, and transmitted to the PC through wireless LAN. Portable ECG system can offer the environment that give the lasting medical service to the elderly and the long-time hospitalized patients at the wanted place, and the system can be attached to the chair, wheel chair, treadmill, elderly walker and used to monitor the health condition of man

In this paper, the tracking control of an automatic pipe cutting robot, called APCROM, with a magnetic binder is studied. Using magnetic force APCROM, a wheeled robot, binds itself to the pipe and executes unmanned cutting process. The gravity effect on the movement of APCROM varies as it rotates around the pipe laid in the gravitational field. In addition to the varying gravity effect other types of nonlinear disturbances including backlash in the driving system and the slip between the wheels of APCROM and the pipe also cause degradation in the cutting process. To maintain a constant velocity and consistent cutting performance, the authors adopt a repetitive learning controller (MRLC), which learns the required effort to cancel the tracking errors. An angular-position estimation method based on the MEMS-type accelerometer is also used in conjunction with MRLC to compensate the tracking error caused by slip at the wheels. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

In this study, a translational 3-DOF parallel mechanism formed by constraining the Stewart Platform Mechanism is investigated. The translational 3-DOF parallel mechanism has three struts(3-UPS type serial subchains) and in addition, has a PPP type serial subchain in the middle of the mechanism. Firstly, the closed-form forward and reverse position solutions are derived for this mechanism. And analysis on kinematic characteristics using isotropic index of the Jacobian is conducted to examine effects of design parameters for the mechanism. Lastly, a prototype mechanism is implemented and the kinematic performance of the translational 3-DOF parallel mechanism was verified through experimental work.

Multiple sequence alignment is a method to compare two or more DNA or protein sequences. Most of multiple sequence alignment tools rely on pairwise alignment and Smith-Waterman algorithm to generate an alignment hierarchy. Therefore, in the existing multiple alignment method as the number of sequences increases, the runtime increases exponentially. In order to remedy this problem, we adopted a parallel processing suffix tree algorithm that is able to search for common subsequences at one time without pairwise alignment. Also, the cross-matching subsequences triggering inexact-matching among the searched common subsequences might be produced. So, the cross-matching masking process was suggested in this paper. To identify the function of the clusters generated by suffix tree clustering, BLAST and CDD (Conserved Domain Database)search were combined with a clustering tool. Our clustering and annotating tool consists of constructing suffix tree, overlapping common subsequences, clustering gene sequences and annotating gene clusters by BLAST and CDD search. The system was successfully evaluated with 36 gene sequences in the pentose phosphate pathway, clustering 10 clusters, finding out representative common subsequences, and finally identifying functional domains by searching CDD database.

Since the muiltipath signal arrives at the GPS receiver later than the line-of-sight signal, the multipath signal makes the shape of the correlation function asymmetric. This paper proposes a multipath mitigation method through asymmetry estimation of the correlation function, in which multiple correlators are utilized. The asymmetry is estimated from correlation values of correlators which have different chip spacings. Based on the estimated asymmetry, the correlation function is modified in order to get a better code tracking performance. Even through the proposed method uses multiple correlators including the narrow correlator, the acquisition performance is not degraded since the number of search cell of the narrow correlator part can be reduced in the algorithm of the proposed method. The simulation results show that the proposed method gives better performance than the generic correlator in multipath environment.