In this paper Legendre wavelets are used to approximate the solutions of linear time-invariant system. The Legendre wavelet and its integral operational matrix are presented and an efficient algorithm to solve the Sylvester matrix equation is proposed. The algorithm is based on the decomposition of the Sylvester matrix equation and the preorder traversal algorithm. Using the special structure of the Legendre wavelet's integral operational matrix, the full order Sylvester matrix equation can be solved in terms of the solutions of pure algebraic matrix equations, which reduce the computation time remarkably. Finally a numerical example is illustrated to demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm.

We consider discrete-time LTI (Linear Time-Invariant) systems with constant input delays. The input delay is modeled by a first-order PdE (Partial difference Equation) and a backstepping transformation is employed to design a predictor feedback controller. The backstepping approach results in the construction of an explicit Lyapunov function, with which we prove the exponential stability of the closed-loop system formed by the predictor feedback. The numerical example demonstrates the design of the predictor feedback controller, and illustrates the validity of the exponential stability.

This paper addresses the robust fault tolerant controller design problems of static output systems with disturbance. The fault is expressed by the abrupt chattering of system parameters. The design conditions are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities and linear matrix equalities. An illustrative example is provided to verify performances of the proposed controller.

In this paper, a small, lightweight smartphone-controlled riding robot is developed. Also, in this study, a smartphone with a jog shuttle mode for consideration of user convenience is proposed to make a small, lightweight riding robot. As well, a compass sensor is used to compensate for the mechanical characteristics of motors mounted on the riding robot. The riding robot is controlled by the interface of a drag-based jog shuttle in the smartphone, instead of a mechanical controller. For a personal riding robot, if the smartphone is used as a controller instead of a handle or a pole, it reduces its size, weight, and cost to a great extent. Thus, the riding robot can be used in indoor spaces such as offices for moving or a train or bus station and an airport for scouting, or hospital for disabilities. Experimental results show that the riding robot is easily and conveniently controlled by the proposed smartphone interface based on Android.

Path planning of mobile robots has a purpose to design an optimal path from an initial position to a target point. Minimum driving time, minimum driving distance and minimum driving error might be considered in choosing the optimal path and are correlated to each other. In this paper, an efficient driving trajectory is planned in a real situation where a mobile robot follows a moving object. Position and distance of the moving object are obtained using a web camera, and the rotation angular and linear velocities are estimated using Kalman filters to predict the trajectory of the moving object. Finally, the mobile robot follows the moving object using a single curvature trajectory by estimating the trajectory of the moving object. Using the estimation by Kalman filters and the single curvature in the trajectory planning, the total tracking distance and time saved amounts to about 7%. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been verified through real tracking experiments.

This research proposes a vibration pattern algorithm to implement the haptic joystick to control a mobile robot at the remote site without watching the navigation environment. When the user cannot watch the navigation environment of the mobile robot, the user may rely on the haptic joystick solely to avoid obstacles and to guide the mobile robot to the target. To generate vibration patterns, there is a vibration motor at the bottom of the joystick which is held by the user to control the motion direction of the mobile robot remotely. When the mobile robot approaches to an obstacle, a pattern of vibration is generated by the motor, and by feeling the vibration pattern which is determined by the relative position of the mobile robot to the obstacle, the user can move the joystick to avoid the collision to the obstacle for the mobile robot. To generate the vibration patterns to convey the relative location of the obstacle near the mobile robot to the user, Fuzzy interferences have been utilized. To measure the distance and location of the obstacle near the mobile robot, ultrasonic sensors with the ring structure have been adopted and they are attached at the front and back sides of the mobile robot. The precise location of the obstacle is obtained by fusing the multiple data from ultrasonic sensors. Effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been verified through the real experiments and the results are demonstrated.

In multi-robot systems, ultrasonic sensors are widely used for localization and/or obstacle detection. However, conventional ultrasonic sensors have a drawback, that is, the interference problem among ultrasonic transmitters. There are some previous studies to avoid interferences, such as TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) and CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). In multiple autonomous mobile robots systems, the Doppler-effect has to be considered because ultrasonic transceivers are attached to the moving robots. To overcome this problem, we find out the ASK (Amplitude Shift Keying)-CDMA technique is more robust to the Doppler-effect than the BPSK (Binary Phase Shift Keying)-CDMA technique. In this paper, we propose a new code-expression method and a Monte-Carlo based algorithm that optimizes the ultrasonic code combination in the ASK-CDMA ultrasonic system. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm improves the performance of the ultrasonic multiple accessing capacity in the ASK-CDMA ultrasonic system.

Mammals such as dogs and cheetahs change their gait from trot to gallop as they run faster. However, lizards always trot for various speeds of running. When mammals run slowly with trot gait, their fore leg and hind leg generate the required force for acceleration or deceleration such that the yaw moments created by these forces cancel each other. On the other hand, when lizards run slowly, their fore legs and hind legs generate the forces for deceleration and acceleration, respectively. In this paper, the yaw motion of a lizard model is controlled by the movement of their waist and tail, and the reaction moment from the ground produced by the hind legs in simulation. The simulation uses the whole body dynamics of a lizard model, which consists of 4 links based on the Callisaurus draconoides. The results show that the simulated trotting of the model is similar to that of a real lizard when the movement of the model is optimized to minimize the reaction moment from the ground. It means that the body of a lizard moves in such a way that the reaction moment from the ground is minimized. This demonstrates our hypothesis on how lizards trot using body motion.

When a conductive rod is put within rotating axial magnet wheels arranged parallel, three-axial magnetic forces generate on the rod. In some region, the forces has a property of negative stiffness, thus they can be applied to noncontact conveyance of the rod without a control load. Apart from the passive driving, the magnet wheel should be controlled for the rod to be stayed at the still state or be moved in a specified velocity. But, because a control input is just the rotating speed of the magnet wheel, the number of input is less than that of variables to be controlled. It means that levitation force and thrust force increase at the same time for increasing wheel speed, resulting from a strong couple between two forces. Thus, in this paper, a novel method, in which the longitudinal motion of the rod is controlled indirectly by the normal motion of the rod with respect to the wheel center, is introduced to manipulate the rod without mechanical contact on space.

Several estimation methods used in the range measurement based wireless localization area have individual problems. These problems may not occur according to certain application areas. However, these problems may give rise to serious problems in particular applications. In this paper, three methods, ILS (Iterative Least Squares), DS (Direct Solution), and DSRM (Difference of Squared Range Measurements) methods are considered. Problems that can occur in these methods are defined and a simple hybrid solution is presented to solve them. The ILS method is the most frequently used method in wireless localization and has local minimum problems and a large computational burden compared with closed-form solutions. The DS method requires less processing time than the ILS method. However, a solution for this method may include a complex number caused by the relations between the location of reference nodes and range measurement errors. In the near-field region of the complex solution, large estimation errors occur. In the DSRM method, large measurement errors occur when the mobile node is far from the reference nodes due to the combination of range measurement error and range data. This creates the problem of large localization errors. In this paper, these problems are defined and a hybrid localization method is presented to avoid them by integrating the DS and DSRM methods. The defined problems are confirmed and the performance of the presented method is verified by a Monte-Carlo simulation.

This paper presents a step length estimation algorithm for Pedestrian Dead Reckoning using linear calibrated ZUPT (zero velocity update) with a foot mounted IMU. The IMU consists of 3 axis accelerometer, gyro and magnetometer. Attitude of IMU is estimated using an inertial navigation algorithm. To increase accuracy of step length estimation algorithm, we propose a stance detection algorithm and an enhanced ZUPT. The enhanced ZUPT calculates firefighter's step length considering velocity error caused by sensor bias during one step. This algorithm also works efficiently at various motions, such as crawling, sideways and stair stepping. Through experiments, the step length estimation performance of the proposed algorithm is verified.

EU's Galileo project is a market-based GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) that is under development. It is expected that Galileo will provide the positioning services based on new technologies in 2020s. Because Galileo E1 signal for OS (Open Service) shares the same center frequency with GPS L1 C/A signal, CBOC (Composite Binary Offset Carrier) modulation scheme is used in the E1 signal to guarantee interoperability between two systems. With E1 signal consisting of a data channel and a pilot channel at the same frequency band, there exist several options in designing signal acquisition for Assisted-Galileo receivers. Furthermore, compared to SNR worksheet of Assisted-GPS, some factors should be examined in Assisted-Galileo due to different correlation profile and code length of E1 signal. This paper presents SNR worksheets of Galileo E1 signals in E1-B and E1-C channel. Three implementation losses that are quite different from GPS are mainly analyzed in establishing SNR worksheets. In the worksheet, hybrid long integration of 1.5s is considered to acquire weak signal less than -150dBm. Simulation results show that the final SNR of E1-B signal with -150dBm is 19.4dB and that of E1-C signal is 25.2dB. Comparison of relative computation shows that E1-B channel is more profitable to acquire the strongest signal in weak signal environment. With information from the first satellite signal acquisition, fast acquisition of the weak signal around -155dBm can be performed with E1-C signal in the subsequent satellites.

This paper deals with the problem of unfairness among uplink TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) flows associated with frame aggregation employed in IEEE 802.11n WLANs (Wireless Local Area Networks). When multiple stations have uplink TCP flows and transmit TCP data packets to an AP (Access Point), the AP has to compete for channel access with stations for the transmission of TCP ACK (acknowledgement) packets to the stations. Due to this contention-based channel access, TCP ACKs tend to be accumulated in the AP's downlink buffer. We show that the frame aggregation in the MAC (Medium Access Control) layer increases TCP ACK losses in the AP and leads to the serious unfair operation of TCP congestion control. To resolve this problem, we propose the TAC (TCP ACK Compression) mechanism operating at the top of the AP's interface queue. By exploiting the properties of cumulative TCP ACK and frame aggregation, TAC serves only the representative TCP ACK without serving redundant TCP ACKs. Therefore, TAC reduces queue occupancy and prevents ACK losses due to buffer overflow, which significantly contributes to fairness among uplink TCP flows. Also, TAC enhances the channel efficiency by not transmitting unnecessary TCP ACKs. The simulation results show that TAC tightly assures fairness under various network conditions while increasing the aggregate throughput, compared to the existing schemes.