This paper deals with the trajectory planning of multi agent robots using complex potential theory for robot soccer. The complex potential theory is introduced, then the circle theorem is used to avoid obstacles, and the vortex pair is used to make precise kicking direction of robot. Various situations of robot soccer are simulated and the effect of vortex strength and the speed of robots are discussed and the better way to avoid obstacles and to kick the precise direction is found. The feasibilities of complex potential theory to apply for the multi agent robots are successful.

For precise motion control, S-curve velocity profile is generally used but it has disadvantage of relatively long calculation time for floating-point arithmetics. In this paper, we present a new generating method for velocity profile to reduce delay time of profile generation so that it overcomes such disadvantage and enhances the efficiency of precise motion control. In this approach, the velocity profile is designed based on the gamma correction expression that is generally used in image processing to obtain a smoother movement without any critical jerk. The proposed velocity profile is designed to support both T-curve and S-curve velocity profile. It can generate precise profile by adding an offset to the velocity profile with decimals under floating point that are not counted during gamma correction arithmetic operation. As a result, the operation time is saved and the efficiency is improved. The proposed method is compared with the existing method that generates velocity profile using ring buffer on a 8-bit low-cost MCU. The result shows that the proposed method has no delay in generating driving profile with good accuracy of each cycle velocity. The significance of the proposed method lies in reduction of the operation time without degrading the motion accuracy. Generated driving signal also shows to verify effectiveness of the proposed method.

We propose a near optimal controller design method for ramp metering based on SDRE (State Dependent Riccati Equation) approach. We parameterize the optimal nonlinear controller in terms of the solution matrices of an SDRE. We also give a simple algorithm to obtain the controller gain. Finally we give numerical results to show the effectiveness of the proposed near optimal traffic controller design method.

In this paper, we propose a model-based fault diagnosis method applied to vibration data. The fault detection is performed by comparing estimated parameters with normal parameters and deciding if the observed changes can be explained satisfactorily in terms of noise or undermodelling. The key feature of this method is that it accounts for the effects of noise and model mismatch. And we aslo design a classifier for the fault isolation by applying the multiclass SVM (Support Vector Machine) to the estimated parameters. The proposed fault detection and isolation methods are applied to an engine vibration data to show a good performance. The proposed fault detection method is compared with a signal-based fault detection method through a performance analysis.

Most of previous genetic algorithms for solving graph problems have used a vertex-based encoding. We proposed an edge encoding based new genetic algorithm using a spanning tree. Contrary to general edge-based encoding, a spanning tree-based encoding represents only feasible partitions. As a target problem, we adopted the MAX CUT problem, which is well known as a representative NP-hard problem, and examined the performance of the proposed genetic algorithm. The experiments on benchmark graphs are executed and compared with vertex-based encoding. Performance improvements of the spanning tree-based encoding on sparse graphs was observed.

This study proposes a method for improvement of PD type fuzzy controller. The method includes self tuner using gradient algorithm that is one of the optimization algorithms. The proposed controller improves simple Takagi-Sugeno type FLC (Fuzzy Logic Control) system. The simple Takagi-Sugeno type FLC system changes nonlinear characteristic to linear parameters of consequent membership function. The simple FLC system could control the system by calibrating parameter of consequent membership function that changes the system response. While the determination on parameter of the simple FLC system works well only partially, the proposed method is needed to determine parameters that work for overall response. The simple FLC system doesn't predict the response characteristics. While the simple FLC system works just like proportional part of PID, our system includes derivative part to predict the next response. The proposed controller is constructed with P part and D part FLC system that characteristic parameter on system response is changed by self tuner for effective response. Since the proposed controller doesn't include integral part, it can't eliminate steady state error. So we include a gain to eliminate the steady state error.

To achieve synchronized motion between a wearable robot and a human user, the redundancy must be resolved in the same manner by both systems. According to the seven DOF (Degrees of Freedom) human arm model composed of the shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints, positioning and orientating the wrist in space is a task requiring only six DOFs. Due to this redundancy, a given task can be completed by multiple arm configurations, and thus there exists no unique mathematical solution to the inverse kinematics. This paper presents analysis on the kinematic and dynamic aspect of the human arm movement and their effect on the redundancy resolution of the human arm based on a seven DOF manipulator model. The redundancy of the arm is expressed mathematically by defining the swivel angle. The final form of swivel angle can be represented as a linear combination of two different swivel angles achieved by optimizing different cost functions based on kinematic and dynamic criteria. The kinematic criterion is to maximize the projection of the longest principal axis of the manipulability ellipsoid for the human arm on the vector connecting the wrist and the virtual target on the head region. The dynamic criterion is to minimize the mechanical work done in the joint space for each two consecutive points along the task space trajectory. As a first step, the redundancy based on the kinematic criterion will be thoroughly studied based on the motion capture data analysis. Experimental results indicate that by using the proposed redundancy resolution criterion in the kinematic level, error between the predicted and the actual swivel angle acquired from the motor control system is less than five degrees.

This paper proposes a method to extract accurate plane of an object in unstructured environment for a humanoid robot by using a laser scanner. By panning and tilting 2D laser scanner installed on the head of a humanoid robot, 3D depth map of unstructured environment is generated. After generating the 3D depth map around a robot, the proposed plane extraction method is applied to the 3D depth map. By using the hierarchical clustering method, points on the same plane are extracted from the point cloud in the 3D depth map. After segmenting the plane from the point cloud, dimensions of the planes are calculated. The accuracy of the extracted plane is evaluated with experimental results, which show the effectiveness of the proposed method to extract planes around a humanoid robot in unstructured environment.

This paper presents obstacle avoidance method for scout robot or industrial robot in unknown environment by using IR sensor and vision system. In the proposed method, robots share the information where the obstacles are located in real-time, thus the robots can choose the best path for obstacle avoidance. Using IR sensor and vision system, multiple robots efficiently evade the obstacles by the proposed cooperation method. No landmark is used at wall or floor in experiment environment. The obstacles don't have specific color or shape. To get the information of the obstacle, vision system extracts the obstacle coordinate by using an image labeling method. The information obtained by IR sensor is about the obstacle range and the locomotion direction to decide the optimal path for avoiding obstacle. The experiment was conducted in $7m{\times}7m$ indoor environment with two-wheeled mobile robots. It is shown that multiple robots efficiently move along the optimal path in cooperation with each other in the space where obstacles are located.

The MPC (Model Predictive Control) is one of the techniques that can be used to control an unmanned vehicle. It predicts the future vehicle trajectory using the dynamic characteristic of the vehicle and generate the control value to track the reference path. If some obstacles are detected on the reference paths, the MPC can generate control value to avoid the obstacles imposing the inequality constraints on the MPC cost function. In this paper, we propose an obstacle modeling algorithm for MPC with inequality constraints for obstacle avoidance and a method to set selective constraint on the MPC for stable obstacle avoidance. Simulations with the field test data show successful obstacle avoidance and way point tracking performance.