This paper proposes about decentralized control approach based Leader-Follower formation control using LOS (Line of Sight) algorithm and unknown input observer. The position of robots which is a basic information in multi-robot or single robot motion control is determined by localization algorithm fusing UPS (Ultrasonic Position System) and kinematics model. For formation control, a decentralized control approach individually installing a local controller in leader and follower robot is adopted. Leader robot is controlled to track a specified trajectory by LOS algorithm, and the other robots follow the leader by local controller based on tracking platoon level function, self-sensing data and estimated information from unknown input observer. The performance of proposed method is proven through the formation experiment of two vehicle models.

This paper introduces development of location estimation and navigation system of mobile robots using USN and LEGO Mindstorms NXT. Developed system includes location estimation, location and navigation information display and navigation control parts. It used ZigBee based USN which was built with CC2431 chip to locate blind node and implemented fuzzy model to improve ability of calculation of distances from reference nodes and location of mobile robots. This paper proposed combination method of location estimation using USN and encoder which is built in motors of mobile robots. Experimental results showed proposed method is superior to the method which used USN only in location estimation and navigating robots. Developed system can locate current position of mobile robots and monitor information from sensor nodes like temperature, humidity and send control signal to mobile robot to move.

In this paper we study the consensus problem of SISO (Single-Input Single-Output) linear multi-agent systems under a fixed weighted undirected network communication. The dynamics of each agent can be of any order, while it is constrained to be neutrally stable. Based on a simple root locus argument, we show that the problem at hand is always solvable if the gain and zeros of the dynamic compensator, of which dimension is the same as the number of plant poles on the imaginary axis, are chosen suitably, finally the result is successfully verified by an example.

In this paper we consider the multi-robot system that collects target objects spread in an unexplored environment. The robots cooperate each other to improve the capability and the efficiency. The robots attract or intimidate each other as behaviors of bacterial swarms or particles with electrical moments. The interactions would increase the working efficiency in some environments but it would decrease the efficiency in some other environments. Therefore, the system needs to adapt to the working environment by adjusting the strengths of the interactions. The strengths of the interactions are expressed as sets of gene codes that mean the weights of each kind of attracting or intimidating vectors. The proposed system adjusts the gene codes using evolutional strategy. The proposed approach has been validated by computer simulation. The results of this paper show that our inter-swarm interacting strategy and optimizing algorithm improves the working efficiency, adaptively to the characteristics of environments.

This paper describes a multi-mobile robot system with fuzzy rule based structure in collision avoidance. Collision avoidance is an important function to perform a given task collaboratively and cooperatively in multi-mobile robot environments. So the important but challenging problem is handled in this paper. Considered obstacles for collision avoidance between multi mobile robots are static, dynamic, or both of them at the same time. Using the fuzzy rule based structure, distance and angle from a robot to obstacles are described as fuzzy linguistic values and steering angle for the robot are updated from the collision environments. As a result, the multi-mobile robot can modify a global path from a robot itself to its own target. In addition, avoiding collision with static or dynamic obstacles for the robot system can be achieved. Simulation based experimental results are given to show usefulness of this method.

This paper is to present map building of mobile robot using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology and ultrasonic sensor. For mobile robot to perform map building, the mobile robot needs its localization and accurate driving in space. In this reason, firstly, kinematic modeling of mobile robot under non-holonomic constrains is introduced. Secondly, based on this modeling, a tracking controller is designed for tracking a given path based on backstepping method using Lyapunov function. The Lyapunov function is also introduced for proving the stability of the designed tracking controller. Thirdly, 2D map building is performed by RFID system, mobile robot system and ultrasonic sensors. The RFID mobile robot system is composed of DC motor, encoder, ultra sonic sensor, digital compass, RFID receiver and RFID antenna. Finally, the path tracking simulation results and map building experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of the designed controller.

Almost all of control schemes proposed so far have been designed in the continuous-time domain theoretically. Actual systems, however, have been implemented in the discrete-time domain since Micro Control Unit(MCU) and/or microprocessors have been used for the controllers. Thus, the overall system turned to be a sampled-data system, and generally speaking, the ultimate error cannot converge to zero in the actual system even though the proposed control algorithm showed the asymptotic stability in the continuous-time domain. In this paper, therefore, the ultimate error bound of a sampled data system with a short sampling period has been investigated. The ultimate error is shown to be related in the sampling period.

The paper proposes a new type of robust speed control strategy for permanent magnet synchronous motor by using PD-sliding mode hybrid control. The PD control has a good performance in the transient region while the sliding mode controller provides the robustness against system uncertainties. Taking advantages of the two control strategies, the proposed control method utilizes the PD control in the approaching region to the sliding surface and the sliding mode control near at the sliding surfaces. The chattering problem of the sliding mode controller is eliminated by applying the saturation function for the switching function of the sliding mode control. The stability of the sliding mode control is verified by using Lyapunov function with the proper selection of variable gains. It is shown that with this simple switching algorithm, stability of the overall hybrid control system is ensured. Through the simulations, the PD-sliding mode algorithm is shown to have a good performance in the transient response as well as being robust against disturbances. The robustness of the PD-sliding mode algorithm is further demonstrated against various external disturbances in the real experiments of SPMSM motor control.

The paper proposes a sensorless speed control strategy for a PMSM (Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor) based on a new SMO (Sliding Mode Observer), which substitutes a signum function with a sigmoid function. To apply robust sensorless control of PMSM against parameter fluctuations and disturbance, the high speed SMO is proposed, which estimates the rotor position and angular velocity from the back EMF. The low-pass filter and additional position compensation of the rotor are used to reduce the chattering problem commonly found in sliding mode observer with signum function, which becomes possible by applying the sigmoid function with the control of a switching function. Also the proposed sliding mode observer with the sigmoid function has better efficiency than the conventional sliding mode observer since it adjusts the observer gain by variable boundary layer and estimates the stator resistance. The stability of the proposed sliding mode observer is verified by the Lyapunov second method in determining the observer gain. The validity of the proposed high speed PMSM sensorless velocity control has been demonstrated by real experiments.

The purpose of this paper is to propose new techniques to match measured optical images by using the edge abstraction method and differentiation method based on image processing technology. To do this, we detect the matching template and non-matching template from each optical image. And then, we detect the edge parts of the overlaped image from comer edge abstraction method and remove noise image. At last, these data are related to applied first-order derivative operator. Finally, we show the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method through some experiments.

In this paper, we present the detection method of moving objects based on two background models. These background models support to understand multi layered environment belonged in images taken by shaking camera and each model is MBM(Multiple Background Model) and TMBM (Temporal Median Background Model). Because two background models are Pixel-based model, it must have noise by camera movement. Therefore correlation coefficient calculates the similarity between consecutive images and measures camera motion vector which indicates camera movement. For the calculation of correlation coefficient, we choose the selected region and searching area in the current and previous image respectively then we have a displacement vector by the correlation process. Every selected region must have its own displacement vector therefore the global maximum of a histogram of displacement vectors is the camera motion vector between consecutive images. The MBM classifies the intensity distribution of each pixel continuously related by camera motion vector to the multi clusters. However, MBM has weak sensitivity for temporal intensity variation thus we use TMBM to support the weakness of system. In the video-based experiment, we verify the presented algorithm needs around 49(ms) to generate two background models and detect moving objects.

This paper describes an approach to analyze geometrical information of building images for understanding outdoor environment of autonomous navigation robot. Line segments and color information are used to classily a building with the other objects such as sky, trees, and roads. The line segments and their two neighboring regions are extracted from detected edges in image. The model of line segment (MLS) consists of color information of neighbor regions. This model rules out the line segments of non-building face. A building face converges into dominant vanishing points (DVPs) which include one vertical point and one of five horizontal points in maximum. The intersection of vertical and horizontal lines creates a facet of building. The geometrical characteristics such as the center coordinates, area, aspect ratio and aligned coexistence are used for extracting the windows in the building facet. In experiments, 150 building faces and 1607 windows were detected from the database of outdoor environment. We found that this result shows 94.46% detection rate. These experimental images were all taken in Ulsan metropolitan city in Korea under difference of viewpoints, daytime, camera system and weather condition.

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the performance of telerobotic systems and the two independent time-delay on different modality, which are haptic and video. Especially, we try to find some performance improvement when the amount of delay of haptic and video is synchronized. Experiments were conducted with 10 subjects by scanning the amount of video and haptic delay independently. It is rather interesting to note that the teleoperation performance was not that sensitive to video delay, and the synchronized video and haptic delay doesn't show better performance than the case when haptic delay is lower than video delay.

The multiple block localization method in a wide area for multiple robots using iGS is proposed in this paper. The iGS is developed for the indoor global localization using ultrasonic and RF sensors. To measure the distance between a mobile robot and a beacon, the tag on the mobile robot wakes up one beacon to send out the ultrasonic signal and measures the traveling time from the beacon to the mobile robot. As the number of robots is increased, the sampling time of localization also becomes longer. Note that only one robot can localize its own position calling beacons one by one during each of the sampling interval. This is a severe constraint for the localization of multiple robots in a wide area. This paper proposes an efficient localization algorithm for the multiple robots in a wide area which can be divided into multiple blocks. For a given block, a master beacon is designated to synchronize robots. By the access of the synchronization signal, each beacon in the selected group sends out an ultrasonic signal. When the robots in the block receive the ultrasonic signal, they can calculate their own locations based on the distances to the beacons, which are obtained by the multiplication of flight time and velocity of the ultrasonic signal. The efficiency of the algorithm is verified through the real experiments.

This study was performed to development a dental three-dimensional laser scanning system and measure the accuracy of new adjustable upper dental impression tray. The metal stock, individual, and new adjustable stock trays were used for 30 stone casts(10 casts each) duplicated a resin master model of maxilla. The dental stone was poured in a vinyl polysiloxane impressions and allowed to set for on hour. The master model and the duplicated casts were digitized using an dental scanning system. The distance between the reference points were measured and analyzed on the graphic image of 3D graphic software of CATIA. The statistical significance of the differences between the groups was determined by a two-way ANOVA. There were no significant differences between the accuracies of the adjustable stock tray and the master model except only anterior arch width on the upper arch. The adjustable upper stock tray showed clinically acceptable accuracies of the study cast produced by them.

The aim of this study is to find an analytic solution to the problem of determining the optimal capacity of a batch-storage network to meet demand for finished products in a system undergoing joint random variations of operating time and batch material loss. The superstructure of the plant considered here consists of a network of serially and/or parallel interlinked batch processes and storage units. The production processes transform a set of feedstock materials into another set of products with constant conversion factors. The final product demand flow is susceptible to joint random variations in the cycle time and batch size. The production processes have also joint random variations in cycle time and product quantity. The spoiled materials are treated through regeneration or waste disposal processes. The objective function of the optimization is minimizing the total cost, which is composed of setup and inventory holding costs as well as the capital costs of constructing processes and storage units. A novel production and inventory analysis the PSW (Periodic Square Wave) model, provides a judicious graphical method to find the upper and lower bounds of random flows. The advantage of this model is that it provides a set of simple analytic solutions while also maintaining a realistic description of the random material flows between processes and storage units; as a consequence of these analytic solutions, the computation burden is significantly reduced. The proposed method has the potential to rapidly provide very useful data on which to base investment decisions during the early plant design stage. It should be of particular use when these decisions must be made in a highly uncertain business environment.