It is known that big brown bats can distinguish echo of a prey at various angles. In this paper, we suggest a new object localization strategy using ultrasonic echolocation. We calculate the relative energy ratio between a high frequency component of ultrasound signal and a low frequency component of ultrasound signal for a target object. We found the measure depends on bearing angle of the object in space. We also tested energy ratio of echoed FM ultrasound signals depending on frequency, based on cross-correlation. It can determine the relative angular position of objects even though the reflected signals are congested form each object.

This paper presents a bending propagating actuation using SMA (Shape Memory Alloy) spring for an effective shape transition of a flytrap-inspired soft morphing structure. The flytrap-inspired soft morphing structure is made from unsymmetric CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Prepreg) structure which shows bi-stability and snap-through phenomenon. For a thin and large curved bistable CFRP structure, SMA spring is more acceptable than SMA wire and piezoelectric actuator which used in previous investigations. A bending propagating actuation is proposed which can induce snap-through of the bi-stable CFRP structure effectively. From this research, effective shape transition of soft morphing structure is possible.

A nonlinear navigation filter for biomimetic robot using analytic approximation of mean and covariance of state variable is proposed. The approximations are performed at the time update step in the filter structure. The mean is approximated to the 3rd order of Taylor's series expansion of true mean and the covariance is approximated to the 3rd order either. The famous EKF is a nonlinear filtering method approximating the mean to 1st order and the covariance to the 3rd order. The UKF approximate them to the higher orders by numerical method. The proposed method derived a analytical approximation of them for navigation system and therefore don't need so called sigma point transformation in UKF. The simulation results show that the proposed method can be a good alternative of UKF in the systems which require less computational burden.

Horse riding is widely recognized as a valuable form of education, exercise and therapy. But, the injuries observed in horse riding range from very minor injuries to fatalities. In order to reduce these injuries, the effective horseback riding simulator is required. In this paper, we proposed the implementation method of horse gait and riding aids for horseback riding robot simulator HRB-1. For implementation of horse gait to robot simulator, we gathered and modified real motion data of horse. We obtained two main frequencies of each gait by frequency analysis, and then simple sinusoidal functions are acquired by genetic algorithm. In addition, we developed riding aids system including hands, leg, and seat aids. With the help of a developed robotic system, beginners can learn the skill of real horse riding without the risk of injury.

In this study, a carbon nanotube (CNT) flexible strain sensor was fabricated with CNT based epoxy and rubber composites for tactile sensing. The flexible strain sensor can be fabricated as a long fibrous sensor and it also may be able to measure large deformation and contact information on a structure. The long and flexible sensor can be considered to be a continuous sensor like a dendrite of a neuron in the human body and we named the sensor as a biomimetic artificial neuron. For the application of the neuron in biomimetic engineering, an ANMS (Artificial Neuron Matrix System) was developed by means of the array of the neurons with a signal processing system. Moreover, a strain positioning algorithm was also developed to find localized tactile information of the ANMS with Labview for the application of an artificial e-skin.

Mobility is one of the most important issues for search and rescue robots. To increase mobility for small size robot we have focused on the mechanism and algorithm inspired from centipede. In spite of small size, using many legs and flexible long body, centipede can overcome high obstacles and move in rough terrains stably. This research focused on those points and imitated their legs and body that are good for obstacle negotiation. Based on similarity of a centipede's legs and tracks, serially connected tracks are used for climbing obstacles higher than the robot's height. And a centipede perceives environments using antennae on its head instead of eyes. Inspired from that, 3 IR sensors are attached on the front, top and bottom of the first module to imitate the antenna. Using the information gotten from the sensors, the robot decides next behavior automatically. In experiments, the robot can climb up to 45 cm height vertical wall and it is 600 % of the robot's height and 58 % of the robot's length.

Jumping is considered as a suitable way for realizing fast locomotion on the ground. As for the issue of developing mobile robots that can jump up and forward enough for accomplishing useful missions, this paper first introduces two types of jumping principles that are found in biological animals or insects. We also present how the principles are applied to several jumping robot examples that include outcomes for the past a few years and also our recent one. Design ideas and features of the robots are explained and compared in order to discuss important issues and guidelines for the design of jumping robots.

This paper presents two adaptive fingerprint matching methods. First, we experiment an adaptive threshold selection of 1:N matching system in order to raise the reliability of the matching score. Second, we propose a adaptive threshold selection using fitting algorithm for high speed matching. The experiment was conducted on the NITZEN database, which has 5247 samples. Consequently, this paper shows that our suggested method can perform 1.88 times faster matching speed than the bidirectional matching speed. And, we prove that FRR of our suggested method decreases 1.43 % than that of the unidirectional matching.

Maintenance and improvement of the graph connectivity is very important for decentralized multi-agent systems. Although the CBBA (Consensus-Based Bundle Algorithm) guarantees suboptimal performance and bounded convergence time, it is only valid for connected graphs. In this study, we apply a decentralized estimation procedure that allows each agent to track the algebraic connectivity of a time-varying graph. Based on this estimation, we design a decentralized gradient controller to maintain the graph connectivity while agents are traveling to perform assigned tasks. Simulation result for fully-actuated first-order agents that move in a 2-D plane are presented.

In this paper, we propose a correction method for astronomical telescope using recursive least square method. There are two ways to move a telescope : equatorial operation and altazimuth operation. We must align polar axis of a equatorial telescope with the north celestial pole and adjust the horizontal axis of a altazimuth telescope exactly to match the celestial coordinate system with the telescope coordinate system. This process needs time and expertise. We can skip existing process and correct a tracking error easily by deriving the relationship of the celestial coordinate system and the telescope coordinate system using the proposed correction method. We obtain the coordinate of a celestial body in the celestial coordinate system and the telescope coordinate system and derive a transformation matrix through the obtained coordinate. We use recursive least square method to estimate the unknown parameters of a transformation matrix. Finally, we implement a telescope control system using a microprocessor and verify the performance of the correction method. Through an experiment, we show the validity of the proposed correction method.

Shielding the air-gap magnetic field of the electrodynamic wheel below a conductive plate and opening the shielding plate partially, a thrust force and a normal force generate on the conductive plate at the open area. But, as only the variable controlling both forces is a rotating speed of the electrodynamic wheel, it is very difficult to control the forces independently by the speed. So, we discuss a novel method controlling the forces effectively through manipulating a size of the open area. The independent control is made possible by virtue of the feature that the relative ratio between both forces is irrelevant to an air-gap length and determined uniquely for a specific rotating speed of the wheel. Therefore, the rotating speed and the size of open area become new control variables. The feasibility of the method is verified experimentally. Specially, the controllable magnetic forces are used in a noncontact conveyance of the conductive plate.

AFC (Adaptive Feedforward Control) is significantly employed for improving control performance of dynamic systems particularly involving periodic disturbance signals in engineering fields. This paper presents a novel hybrid AFC approach for discrete-time systems with multiple disturbances in terms of control input and state variables. The proposed AFC mechanism is hierarchically composed of a conventional feedforward control framework and PID auxiliary control configuration in parallel. The former is generic to decrease periodic disturbance excited to control actuators and the latter is additionally constructed to overcome control deterioration due to time-varying uncertainty under given systems. We carry out numerical simulation to test reliability of our proposed hybrid AFC system and compare its control performance to a well-known conventional AFC method with respect to time and frequency domains for proving of its superiority.

This paper proposes a 3D map-building algorithm using one LRF (Laser Range Finder) while a mobile robot is navigating on the slanted surface. There are several researches on 3D map buildings using the LRF. However most of them are performing the map building only on the flat surface. While a mobile robot is moving on the slanted surface, the view angle of LRF is dynamically changing, which makes it very difficult to build the 3D map using encoder data. To cope with this dynamic change of the view angle in build 3D map, IMU and balance filters are fused to correct the unstable encoder data in this research. Through the real navigation experiments, it is verified that the fusion of multiple sensors are properly performed to correct the slope angle of the slanted surface. The effectiveness of the balance filter are also checked through the hill climbing navigations.

Unmanned ground vehicles have important military, reconnaissance, and materials handling application. Many of these applications require the UGVs to move at high speeds through uneven, natural terrain with various compositions and physical parameters. This paper presents a framework for high speed autonomous navigation based on the integrated real time traversability. Specifically, the proposed system performs real-time dynamic simulation and calculate maximum traversing velocity guaranteeing safe motion over rough terrain. The architecture of autonomous navigation is firstly presented for high-speed autonomous navigation. Then, the integrated real time traversability, which is composed of initial velocity profiling step, dynamic analysis step, road classification step and stable velocity profiling step, is introduced. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the method for a $6{\times}6$ autonomous vehicle moving on flat terrain with bump.

This paper describes a biped walking algorithm for a hydraulic humanoid robot on inclined floors. To realize stable and robust biped walking, the walking algorithm was divided into five control strategies. The first is a joint position control strategy. This strategy is for tracking desired joint position trajectories with a gain switching. The second is a multi-model based ZMP (Zero Moment Point) control strategy for dynamic balance. The third is a walking pattern flow control strategy for smooth transition from step to step. The fourth is an ankle compliance control, which increases the dynamic stability at the moment of floor contact. The last is an upright pose control strategy for robust walking on an inclined floor. All strategies are based on simple pendulum models and include practical sensory feedback in order to implement the strategies on a physical robot. Finally, the performance of the control strategies are evaluated and verified through dynamic simulations of a hydraulic humanoid on level and inclined floors.

We proposed the KPP (Korea university Path Planner) in our previous works. The KPP is the path planning scheme of a car-like mobile robot in parking environment. The objective of this paper is to investigate the advantage of the KPP through the quantitative and qualitative analysis compared with conventional RRT. For comparison, we proposed travel time for performance index. This paper shows that the KPP shows outstanding performances from the viewpoint of travel time and computational efficiency compared with RRT.

This paper proposes an attitude and direction control of a single wheel balanced robot. A unicycle robot is controlled by two independent control laws: the mobile inverted pendulum control method for pitch axis and the reaction wheel pendulum control method for roll axis. It is assumed that both roll dynamics and pitch dynamics are decoupled. Therefore the roll and pitch dynamics are obtained independently considering the interaction as disturbances to each other. Each control law is implemented by a controller separately. The unicycle robot has two DC motors to drive the disk for roll and to drive the wheel for pitch. Since there is no force to change the yaw direction, the present paper proposes a method for changing the yaw direction. The angle data are obtained by a fusion of a gyro sensor and an accelerometer. Experimental results show the performance of the controller and verify the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.

Using bearing measurement only, target motion state is not directly obtained so that TMA (Target Motion Analysis) is needed for this situation. TMA is a nonlinear estimation technique used in passive SONAR systems. Also it is the one of important techniques for underwater combat management systems. TMA can be divided to two parts: batch estimation and sequential estimation. It is preferable to use sequential estimation for reducing computational load as well as adaptively to target maneuvers, batch estimation is still required to attain target initial state vector for convergence of sequential estimation. Selection of batch time interval which depends on observability is critical in TMA performance. Batch estimation in general utilizes predetermined batch time interval. In this paper, we propose a new method called the BTIS (Batch Time Interval and Initial State Estimation). The proposed BTIS estimates target initial status and determines the batch time interval sequentially by using a bank of GMM-TS (Gaussian Mixture Measurement-Track Splitting) filters. The performance of the proposal method is verified by a Monte Carlo simulation study.