In this paper, we present a comprehensive study for the development of quadruped walking robot. To understand the walking posture of a tetrapod animal, we begin with a careful observation on the skeletal system of tertapod animals. From taking a side view of their skeletal system, it is noted that their fore limbs and hind limbs perform characteristic roles during walking. Moreover, the widths of footprints and energy efficiency in walking have a close relationship through taking a front view of their walking posture. According to these observations, we present a control method where the kinematical solutions are not necessary because we develop a new rhythmic gait pattern for the quadruped walking robot. Though the proposed control method and rhythmic pattern are simple, they can provide the suitable motion planning for the robot since the resultant movement is based on the animal's movements. The validity of the proposed idea is demonstrated through dynamic simulations.

Support vector machines in biped humanoid robot are presented in this paper. The trajectory of the ZMP in biped walking robot poses an important criterion for the balance of the walking robots but complex dynamics involved make robot control difficult. We are establishing empirical relationships based on the dynamic stability of motion using SVMs. SVMs and kernel method have become very popular method for learning from examples. We applied SVM to model the practical humanoid robot. Three kinds of kernels are employed also and each result has been compared. As a result, SVM based on kernel method have been found to work well. Especially SVM with RBF kernel function provides the best results. The simulation results show that the generated ZMP from the SVM can be improve the stability of the biped walking robot and it can be effectively used to model and control practical biped walking robot.

This paper introduces a new entertainment robot called ELIRO-II(Eating Lizard RObot version 2)which is a bio-mimetic quadruped walking robot with autonomous eating function. We focus on the realization of the behavior of an animal, i.e., wandering around to find food and eating food. The ELIRO-II is modeled after a lizard, which has four legs, 2-DOF waist-joint, an eye part, a mouth part and a stomach part. The effectiveness of the developed robot is shown through real experiments.

A new evolutionary computation technique, called particle swarm optimization(PSO), has been proposed and introduced recently. PSO has been inspired by the social behavior of flocking organisms, such as swarms of birds and fish schools and PSO is an algorithm that follows a collaborative population-based search model. Each particle of swarm flies around in a multidimensional search space looking for the optimal solution. Then, Particles adjust their position according to their own and their neighboring-particles experience. In this paper, characteristics of PSO such as mentioned are reviewed and compared with GA which is based on the evolutionary mechanism in natural selection. Also dimensionalities of PSO and GA are compared throughout numeric experimental studies. The comparative studies demonstrate that PSO is characterized as simple in concept, easy to implement, and computationally efficient and can generate a high-quality solution and stable convergence characteristic than GA.

An analysis methodology of Decentralized Dynamic Surface Control (DDSC) for the large-scale interconnected nonlinear systems is presented in this paper. While the centralized DSC approach proposed in [14] has a difficulty to check the quadratic stability for the large-scale systems numerically due to dramatic increases of the order of overall augmented error dynamics, DDSC is relatively easy to check the quadratic stability since lower order error dynamics of individual subsystems are used. Then, a systematic procedure for designing DDSC will be developed. Furthermore, after a quadratic function containing a reachable set is defined, it will be calculated numerically to indicate the performance of DDSC in the framework of convex optimization. Finally an illustrative example will be given for showing the advantages of DDSC compared with other decentralized nonlinear control techniques.

In a networked control system (NCS), time delays which are larger than one sampling period can change the control period. As a result, it may cause system instability. This paper presents a control method for an NCS using the controller area network (CAN), where time delays arise in the control loop. Specifically, a simple yet efficient method is proposed to improve control performance in the presence of time delays. The proposed method, which can be regarded as a gain scheduling method, selects a suitable LQ control gain among several gains to deal with the problems due to the change of control period. It is found that the gain can be scheduled in terms of the relation between the gain and the sampling period, which is represented by first-order algebraic equations. The proposed method is evaluated with an inverted cart pendulum system where the actuator and sensors are connected through the CAN. Experiment results are presented to show the efficiency of the proposed method.

The vehicle detection method using pulse radar has the advantage of maintenance in comparison with loop detection method. We propose the pulse radar signal processing algorithm in which we devide the trace. data from pulse radar into segments by using SSC concept, and then construct the sectors in accordance with period and amplitude of segments, and finally decide the vehicle detection probability by applying the SSC parameters of each sectors into the discriminant function. We also improve the signal processing time by reducing the quantities of processing data and processing routines.

This paper demonstrates a new non-contact electronic joystick using single hall sensor which detects a horizontal vector of the magnetic field. Furthermore, in this paper, it is mathematically modeled that nonlinear characteristics between the output of hall sensor and the movement of joystick bar. The dynamic horizontal vector of magnetic flux is detected by the hall sensor while a permanent magnet is rotated with the joystick bar, which has two dimension detecting area. Using the nonlinear adjustment equations, the output signals of hall sensor have been linearized to give higher accuracy in the two dimension movement. Finally, through the real experiments, it is showed that the single hall sensor structure mechanism is superior to the dual sensor structure in sensing the two-dimensional motion without offset.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is high resolution medical imaging system which is obtaining image inside biological objects with non-destructive method. OCT system is based on Michelson interferometer with a reciprocating mirror in the reference arm and a biological object in the sample arm. The obtained OCT image suffers from a granular or mottled image, called speckle. Speckle is caused by random interferences between reflected coherence waves. In this paper, we propose effective speckle reduction method that uses wavelet transform. With wavelet domain image, sub-windowing and thresholding are performed. Finally, speckle reduction experiments for Misgurnus mizolepis skin and rat eye images are shown.

Increasing requirements for the high quality of industrial robot performance made the vibration control issue very important because the vibration makes it difficult to achieve quick response of robot motion and may bring mechanical damage to the robot. This paper presents a vibration control solution for industrial robots which have flexible joints. The joint flexibility is modeled as a two-mass system. And we analyze the vibration problem of a classical P-PI controller when it used for the flexible joints of industrial robots. Then a state feedback controller is designed for vibration suppression of the two-mass system. Finally, a gain-scheduling method is designed for maintaining control performance in spite of the time-varying nature of each joint's load side inertia. Simulation and experimental results show effective vibration suppression and uniform properties in overshoot in spite of the variation of load. The result of this study can be applied to the appropriate gain manipulation of many other mechatronic devices which have the two-mass system with varying load side inertia.

A noisy behavior of the time domain passivity controller during the period of low velocity is analyzed. Main reasons of the noisy behavior are investigated through a simulation with a one-DOF (Degree of Freedom) haptic interface model. It is shown that the PO/PC is ineffective in dissipating the produced energy when the sign of the velocity, which is numerically calculated from the measured position, is suddenly changed, and when this velocity is zero. These cases happen during the period of low velocity due to the limited resolution of the position sensor. New methods, ignoring the produced energy from the velocity sign change, and holding the control force while the velocity is zero, are proposed for removing the noisy behavior. The feasibility of the developed methods is proved with both a simulation and a real experiment.

Inaccurate localization exposes a robot to many dangerous conditions. It could make a robot be moved to wrong direction or damaged by collision with surrounding obstacles. There are numerous approaches to self-localization, and there are different modalities as well (vision, laser range finders, ultrasonic sonars). Since sensor information is generally uncertain and contains noise, there are many researches to reduce the noise. But, the correctness is limited because most researches are based on statistical approach. The goal of our research is to measure more exact robot location by matching between built VRML 3D model and real vision image. To determine the position of mobile robot, landmark-localization technique has been applied. Landmarks are any detectable structure in the physical environment. Some use vertical lines, others use specially designed markers, In this paper, specially designed markers are used as landmarks. Given known focal length and a single image of three landmarks it is possible to compute the angular separation between the lines of sight of the landmarks. The image-processing and neural network pattern matching techniques are employed to recognize landmarks placed in a robot working environment. After self-localization, the 2D scene of the vision is overlaid with the VRML scene.

A method to recognize unpaved road region using a 3D depth measurement system is proposed for mobile robots. For autonomous maneuvering of mobile robots, recognition of obstacles or recognition of road region is the essential task. In this paper, the 3D depth measurement system which is composed of a rotating mirror, a line laser and mono-camera is employed to detect depth, where the laser light is reflected by the mirror and projected to the scene objects whose locations are to be determined. The obtained depth information is converted into an image. Such depth images of the road region represent even and plane while that of off-road region is irregular or textured. Therefore, the problem falls into a texture identification problem. Road region is detected employing a simple spatial differentiation technique to detect the plain textured area. Identification results of the diverse situation of unpaved trail are included in this paper.

We suggest a method to detect rear car license plate of one more cars by using blobs. First, we try to search all of the blobs from an input image based on the difference between objects and background. Second, we obtain rectangles enclosed the blobs, and rectangle clusters by considering the properties, for example, the number, size, distance, position. Third, the cluster is verified by the Support Vector Machine. Even if we only use the adaptive binarization as the preprocessing, the detection ratio is very high.

This paper presents the design of a USB home controller and a home control system that specially is focused on controlling home appliances as a part of home network systems, the implementation of the USB device access class in an OSGi service platform and a home security system as an application. Designed USB home controllers are able to control various home appliances. They can be used not only to control big home appliances like a boiler but also to control small home appliances like a toaster because they are low-cost solutions. The USB home controller supports real time control using the interrupt transfer of the USB specification. And It is easy to use by homemakers who have no technical knowledge of the system because they just plug and unplug it in a home server then it automatically joins and leaves a home control system. This technique is based on hot-plug and the USB Device Access class in an OSGi Service Platform. The USB Device Access class supports the coordination of automatic detection and attachment of the USB home controller on an OSGi Service Platform, and it downloads and installs device drivers on demand. For an application, we implemented and tested a home security system using two USB home controllers and a CDMA module.