The skid-steering method that applied a number of mobile robot currently is very effective in narrow area. But it contains several problems of its natural properties, slip, occurred by different direction between vehicle's driving and wheel's rotary. From this thesis we want to suggest suitable structure of $6{\times}6$ skid steering wheeled vehicle and method of driving by analyzing the behavior of $6{\times}6$ skid-steered wheeled vehicle by engineering analytical method

This paper presents the development of fire-fighting and rescue robot for Outdoor Environment. In the procedure of this development, we follow Target Oriented Design (TOD) which is recognized as the systematic methodology to design a system by specifying the target clearly. For some real fire fighting tasks (e.g. tasks in shopping street and a market), narrow road make it difficult for existing fire engine to access the firing place. On the other hand, for dangerous tasks (e.g. gasoline station and a storehouse) the explosive materials make it impossible for fire-fighters to access the firing place. Moreover, the smoke and the high-temperature caused by fire make fire fighting difficult. In this situation, the solution is to develop the fire-fighting and rescue robot. TOD is performed firstly by analyzing the environment properties of fro place and the demanded tasks and the fire-fighting and rescue robot is manufactured. For safety, the fire fighting robot should be controlled by remote operation to keep the operator away from the fire, and the control system is divided into three parts: the robot controllers, controller for remote operating device and wireless communication system. We have selected and developed appropriate hardware and software for each part of control system with considering TOD. As a result, the fire-fighting robot functions correctly and the performance and usefulness of our control architecture is validated by successfully performing some fire-fighting tasks.

The mobile robots to rescue a life in a disaster area and to explore planets demand high mobility as well as recognition of the environment. To avoid unknown obstacles exactly in unknown environment, accurate sensing is required. This paper proposes a sensor fusion to recognize unknown obstacles accurately by using low-cost sensors. Ultrasonic sensors and infrared sensors are used in this paper to avoid obstacles. If only one of these sensors is used alone, it is not useful fer the mobile robots to complete their tasks in the real world since the surrounding environment in the real world is complex and composed of many kinds of materials. So infrared sensor may not recognize transparent or reflective obstacles and ultrasonic sensor may not recognize narrow obstacles, far example, columns of small diameter. Therefore, I selected six ultrasonic sensors and five infrared sensors to detect obstacles. Then, I fused ultrasonic sensors with infrared sensors in order that both advantages and disadvantages of each sensor are utilized together. In fusing sensors, fuzzy algorithm is used to cope with the uncertainties of each sensor. TAMRY which is terrain-adaptive mobile robot is used as the mobile robot for experiments.

A coaxial rotor flying robot is developed for surveying and reconnoitering various circumstances under calamity environment. The robot has two contrarotating rotors on a common axis, an embedded microcontroller, an IMU(Inertial Measurement Unit), an IR sensor for height control, a micro camera for surveillance, ultrasonic position sensors and wireless communication devices. A bell-bar mounted on the top of the upper rotor hub increases stability and improves flight performance. In this paper, we present a dynamic model of a coaxial rotor flying robot and design an embedded controller far the robot, and implement them to control the developed flying robot. Experimental results show that the proposed controller is valid for autonomous hovering and position control.

The robot introduced in this paper is the Fire-Extinguishing Rescue Robot for indoor work which is considered to be a part of the Operation for Future Developmental Power. It is briefly introduced about the background of how we began this project, our goals, where we are today and what we would like to achieve from now on. Main contents include introduction to the equipments for Fire-Extinguishing Rescue robots that have been developed in advanced countries and the compositional concept of the developmental process, the GUI schematic, searching methods for fire inside a house, mechanical schematic and the present conditions of how the core technologies are developing through.

This paper introduces a mobile robotic system being developed for urban search and rescue. In order to search human victims in narrow spaces, we developed two types of serially linked mobile robots, named KAEROT-Centipede and KAEROT-SnakeTV1, that can climb over large vertical steps or travel inside narrow vertical pipes. To send such mobile robots to the disaster areas coping with large obstacles, we also developed a assistant mobile robot, named KAEROT-QuadTrack, that has 4 articulated track modules. This paper describes the mechanical structure and control architecture of the serially linked mobile robots and the supporting configuration for torque reduction of the assistant mobile robot during spinning motion that usually requires large driving torque. The experimental results show that such robotic systems have good mobility over the various terrains in disaster areas.

Frequent occurrences of a fire cause tremendous loss of human lives and their property. Recently, in order to cope with such catastrophic accidents, researches on fire-fighting robots are carried out in developed countries. Under the dangerous situations, it is sometimes impossible for fire-fighting men to access the firing place because of explosive materials, smoke, high temperature and so on. In such an environment, fire-fighting robots can be useful to extinguish the fire. It is usually very dangerous place where fire-fighting robots operate. Hence, these robots should be controlled by remote users who are for away from the firing place exploiting remote communication systems. This paper considers the communication systems between fire-fighting robots and remote users. The communication systems consist of two parts; digital packet communication systems and analog image communication systems. Digital packet communication systems transfer data packets in order to control fire-fighting robots and to check the state of the fire-fighting robots. Remote users watch the video around the fire-fighting robots by exploiting the analog image communication systems. In the future, the more prosperous the commercial communication network systems will be, the more evolved the communication systems for fire-fighting robots are.

Thermal Imaging systems are reported to be crucial for fire fighting and beginning to be used by fire fighters. The performance of thermal imaging system is determined by both the radiation of infrared from the target and the attenuation of infrared signal in the optical path by the absorption, scattering, diffraction and reflection. In the scene of fire, water drops with various sizes such as vaporized water, wafer mist from sprinkler, and wafer to suppress the fire reside with various gas generated by burning. To measure the transmission of infrared radiation in the scene of fire, fire simulating system and thermal imagers with cooled detector which detects $3{\sim}5{\mu}m$ infrared and uncooled detector fabricated by the MEMS technology which detects $8{\sim}12{\mu}m$ infrared. are made. With thermal imagers and Ire simulating system, the change of thermal image with respect to the change of visibility controlled with the burned fas was measured. It was found that the transmission of infrared was not reduced by the burned gas, which could be explained by the long wavelength of infrared ray compared with visible ray. However, the transmission of infrared ray was largely reduced by the combination of burned gas and water mist supplied by sprinkler. This is contrary to the results of calculated transmission through the pure water mist and shows that the transmission of infrared ray is mostly affected by the compounds of water mist and burned gas. In this case, it was found that the uncooled detector which detects $8{\sim}12{\mu}m$ infrared ray is better than cooled detector which detects $3{\sim}5{\mu}m$ infrared ray for fire fighting.

An unmanned ground vehicle can perform its mission automatically without human control in unknown environment. To move up to a destination in various surrounding situation, navigational information is indispensible. In order to be adopted for an unmanned vehicle, the navigation box is small, light weight and low power consumption. This paper suggests navigation system using a low grade MEMS IMU for supplying position, velocity, and attitude of an unmanned ground vehicle. This system consists of low cost and light weight MEMS sensors and a GPS receiver to meet unmanned vehicle requirements. The sensors are basically integrated by loosely coupled method using Kalman filter and internal algorithms are divided into initial alignment, sensor error compensation, and complex navigation algorithm. The performance of the designed navigation system has been analyzed by real time field test and compared to commercial tactical grade GPS/INS system.

This paper demonstrates the development of a mobile robot for patrol. We fuse differential GPS, angle sensor and odometry data using the framework of extended Kalman filter to localize a mobile robot in outdoor environments. An important feature of road environment is the existence of curbs. So, we also propose an algorithm to find out the position of curbs from laser range finder data using Hough transform. The mobile robot builds the map of the curbs of roads and the map is used fur tracking and localization. The patrol robot system consists of a mobile robot and a control station. The mobile robot sends the image data from a camera to the control station. The remote control station receives and displays the image data. Also, the patrol robot system can be used in two modes, teleoperated or autonomous. In teleoperated mode, the teleoperator commands the mobile robot based on the image data. On the other hand, in autonomous mode, the mobile robot has to autonomously track the predefined waypoints. So, we have designed a path tracking controller to track the path. We have been able to confirm that the proposed algorithms show proper performances in outdoor environment through experiments in the road.

The stability robustness problem of linear discrete-time systems with delayed time-varying perturbations is considered. Compared with continuous time system, little effort has been made for the discrete time system in this area. In the previous results, the bounds were derived for the case of non-delayed perturbations. There are few results for delayed perturbation. Although the results are for the delayed perturbation, they considered only the time-invariant perturbations. In this paper, the sufficient conditions for stability can be expressed as linear matrix inequalities(LMIs). The corresponding stability bounds are determined by LMI(Linear Matrix Inequality)-based algorithms. Numerical examples are given to compare with the previous results and show the effectiveness of the proposed results.

In this paper, we propose a new AC-DC converter control method to comply with harmonics regulation(IEC 61000-3) effective for the inverter system of an air conditioner whose power consumption is less than 2,500W. There are many different ways of AC-DC converter control, but this paper focuses on the converter control method that is adopting an input reactor with low cost silicon steel core to strengthen cost competitiveness of the manufacturer. The proposed control method controls input current every half cycle of the line frequency to get unit power factor and at the same time to reduce switching loss of devices and acoustic noise from reactor. This kind of converter is known as a Partial Switching Converter(PSC). In this study, theoretical analysis of the PSC has been performed using Matlab/Simulink while a 16-bit micro-processor based converter has been used to perform the experimental analysis. In the theoretical analysis, electrical circuit models and equations of the PSC are derived and simulated. In the experiments, micro-processor controls input current to keep the power factor above 0.95 by reducing the phase difference between input voltage and current and at the same time to maintain a reference DC-link voltage against voltage drop which depends on DC-link load. Therefore it becomes possible to comply with harmonic regulations while the power factor is maximized by optimizing the time of current flow through the input reactor for every half cycle of line frequency.

A swarm-bot docking with two independent robots aiming at overcoming obstacles or climbing up/down stairs is introduced how it can be manufactured and controlled. Utilizing the fast mobility of the vehicle robot and cooperating between robots expands the applications of the robot. An algorithm for identifying the partner robot and its generic mechanism enabling the docking of two robots are addressed. The designed swarm-bot has advantages in terms of overcoming obstacle or stair climbing which is not easily implemented by a single robot, increasing the adaptability to the environment.

This paper is to establish an appropriate model for predicting the temperature decreases in the batch transferred from the refining process to the caster in steel-making companies. Mathematical modeling of the temperature decreases between the processes is difficult, since the reaction mechanism by which the temperature changes in a molten steel batch is dynamic, uncertain and complex. Three soft computing techniques are examined using the same data, namely the multiple regression, fuzzy regression, and neural net (NN) models. To compare the accuracy of these three models, a limited number of input variables are selected from those variables significantly affecting the temperature decrease. The results show that the difference in accuracy between the three models is not statistically significant. Nonetheless, the NN model is recommended because of its adaptive ability and robustness. The method presented in this paper allows the temperature decrease to be predicted without requiring any precise metallurgical knowledge.

This paper presents new ignition method and ignition recognition logic for a microturbine. New ignition method is designed by constant speed control of a microturbine with pre-determined time during a ignition period. It make more accurate air-fuel ratio as well as give enough time to ignition system to have full performance under cold temperature. And ignition recognition logic is designed by observing output current change of inverter by generating output torque of a microturbine in the instant of ignition. For filtering a output torque current of inverter with high frequency, we applied a moving average method. So far, ignition recognition is usually implemented by measuring of exhausted gas temperature(EGT) of microturbine. The proposed logic can give more accurate judgement of ignition as well as keep a good working of starting system under out of order a temperature measuring system and biased initial value of EGT sensor. Finally, the two proposed logics are proved by field operating a microturbine under various conditions.