In this paper, we utilize the CMG's momentum bias to control the roll/pitch attitude of the Quad-rotor. While the previous control approaches have used the thrust control approach, we design and add a new momentum controller (using CMG) in order to improve the transient response over the existing methods. The focal point of this paper is the design of a controller for a Quad-rotor's attitude using CMG. This leads to other tasks such as an identification of the model's parameters and mathematical nonlinear modeling. Then, the previous thrust controller is designed based on the linearized model. Finally, the overall system with our designed controller is implemented and tested in real time to show that the Quad-rotor is kept in a good balanced position faster than the traditional thrust-only control approach.

This article presents a comparison among several yaw and roll motion controllers for vehicle rollover prevention. In the previous research, yaw and roll motion controllers can be independently designed for rollover prevention. Following this idea, several yaw and roll motion controllers are designed and compared in terms of rollover prevention. For the yaw motion control, PID, LQR, SMC (Sliding Mode Control) and TDC (Time-Delay Control) are adopted. For the roll motion control, LQR, LQ SOF (Static Output Feedback) control, PID, and SMC are adopted. To compare the performance of each controller, simulation is performed on a vehicle simulation package, CarSim$^{(R)}$. From simulation, TDC and LQ SOF are the best for yaw and roll motion control, respectively.

The inverters used to drive Brushless DC motors (BLDC) include switching devices such as FETs and the faults in FETs cause severe performance degradation in systems where a BLDC acts as actuator. This paper presents a fault detection and isolation method for the FETs of an inverter for BLDC motor control systems, which is based on the EKF (Extended Kalman filter). Firstly, an equivalent circuit model for a BLDC motor plus its inverter system was derived. Secondly, a state-space equation was established, where the on-resistance of the FETs is expressed as a state variable and the EKF equation estimates the on-resistance. If the estimated resistance differs greatly from the known value, it can be asserted that there is a fault on that FET. Thirdly, the local convergence of the established EKF was proved. Finally, through the experiments, the performance of the proposed method was verified. The results show that the on-resistance is estimated close to the value specified in the FET data sheet in normal operation, whereas the estimated resistance is a much larger value than the normal one in case an FET fault occurs. Therefore, it is confirmed that the proposed fault detection and isolation method works appropriately in real systems.

In this paper, the travel control of the spherical wheeled robot with a mecanum wheel is impelemented. Four typical wheels or three omni wheels are used to consist of the ball-bot. the slip is occured when the typical wheels is used to the ball-bot. In order to reduce these slip, the spherical wheeled robot with macanum wheels is proposed. Through some experiments, we find that the proposed spherical wheeled robot with a mecanum wheel is superior to the conventional spherical wheeled robot with typical wheels.

In this paper, we developed the inspection system of electric vehicle battery plate using image processing. Four cameras are used for acquiring the principal parts of the plate, and several steps of image processing for extracting significant dimensions of the plate such as widths and lengths. As a preceding step, calibration of four cameras is carried for compensating distorted images using dot-arrayed sheet. Coordinate systems for four cameras are defined where one coordinate system is assigned to the reference coordinate system to which the others are relatively described. Line information of the edge in the windowed image is extracted using elaborate edge-detection algorithm, and finally the intersection points between lines are extracted to calculate widths and lengths of the plate from which the error status of the battery plate is decided.

This paper presents the altitude control of a quadrotor system under the disturbance. The altitude is measured by an ultra sonic sensor attached at the bottom of the quadrotor system and the measured altitude data are used in the time-delayed controller. To test the robustness of the controller, a weight attached to the center of the system is dropped intentionally several times to cause disturbances to the system. Performances of the altitude control by the PID control and time-delayed control method are compared experimentally. Experimental studies are conducted to verify the outperformance of the time-delayed controller for controlling the altitude of the quadrotor system under disturbances.

This paper introduces a GP (Genetic Programming) based robust technique for the prediction of a heavy rain newsflash. The nature of prediction for precipitation is very complex, irregular and highly fluctuating. Especially, the prediction of heavy precipitation is very difficult. Because not only it depends on various elements, such as location, season, time and geographical features, but also the case data is rare. In order to provide a robust model for precipitation prediction, a nonlinear and symbolic regression method using GP is suggested. The remaining part of the study is to evaluate the performance of prediction for a heavy rain newsflash using a GP based nonlinear regression technique in Korean regions. Analysis of the feature selection is executed and various fitness functions are proposed to improve performances. The KLAPS data of 2006-2010 is used for training and the data of 2011 is adopted for verification.

This paper presents the driving and balancing control of an entertainment robot vehicle that can carry two persons. The entertainment robot vehicle is built with the purpose of carrying passengers with two wheels. It has two driving modes: a balancing mode with two wheels and a driving mode with three wheels. Three cases of different modes are verified by experimental studies. Firstly, a driving mode is tested with two passengers to check the functionality of the vehicle. Secondly, the balancing control performance is tested. Lastly, the balancing control performance under the disturbance is tested.

This paper proposes a machine vision module for PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers). PLC is the industrial controller most widely used in factory automation system. However most of the machine vision systems are based on PC (Personal Computer). The machine vision system embedded in PLC is required to reduce the cost and improve the convenience of implementation. In this paper, we newly propose a machine vision module based on PLC. The image processing libraries are implemented and integrated with the PLC programming tool. In order to interface the libraries with ladder programming, the ladder instruction set was also designed for each vision library. By use of the developed system, PLC users can implement vision systems easily by ladder programming. The developed system was applied to sample inspection system to verify the performance. The experimental results show that the proposed system can reduce the cost of installing as well as increase the ease-of-implementation.

Product shortage which causes backordering and/or lost sales cost is very popular in chemical industries, especially in commodity polymer business. This study deals with backordering cost in the supply chain optimization model under the framework of process-inventory network. Classical economic order quantity model with backordering cost suggested optimal time delay and lot size of the final product delivery. Backordering can be compensated by advancing production/transportation of it or purchasing substitute product from third party as well as product delivery delay in supply chain network. Optimal solutions considering all means to recover shortage are more complicated than the classical one. We found three different solutions depending on parametric range and variable bounds. Optimal capacity of production/transportation processes associated with the product in backordering can be different from that when the product is not in backordering. The product shipping cycle time computed in this study was smaller than that optimized by the classical EOQ model.

DC/DC converters are commonly used to generate regulated DC output voltages with high-power efficiencies from different DC input sources. The converters can be applied in the regenerative braking of DC motors to return energy back to the supply, resulting in energy savings for the systems at periodic intervals. The fundamental converter studied here consists of an IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar mode Transistor), an inductor, a capacitor, a diode, a PWM-IC (Pulse Width Modulation Integrated Circuit) controller with oscillator, amplifier, and comparator. The PWM-IC is a core element and delivers the switching waveform to the gate of the IGBT in a stable manner. Display of the DC/DC converter output depends on the IGBT's changes in the threshold voltage and PWM-IC's pulse width. The simulation was conducted by PSIM software, and the hardware of the DC/DC converter was also implemented. It is necessary to study the fact that the output voltage depends on the duty rate of D, and to compare the output of experimental result with the theory and the simulation.

This paper represents a portable robot for use in the welding process of the double hulls in shipbuilding yards. It has 5 degrees of freedom and 3kg of payload. Its body weight is 17.3 [kg] so that human workers can carry it by hand to the work place. Its body is mainly made of magnesium and aluminum alloys. Since the robot is placed about 25m apart from its controller, EtherCAT is adopted for reliable connection between the robot and controller through a single light cable. RTX real-time kernel and KPA EtherCAT master are used to control the robot on a Windows XP environment. The performance of the developed robot is satisfactory to the requirement in welding tasks of U-type cells in shipbuilding yards.

The carrier-to-noise power ratio is a key parameter for determining the reliability of PVT (Position, Velocity, and Time) solutions which are obtained by a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receiver. It is also used for locking a tracking loop, deciding the re-acquisition process, and processing advanced navigation in the receiver subsystem. The representative carrier-to-noise power ratio estimation schemes are the narrowband-wideband power ratio method (NW), the MM (Moment Method), and Beaulieu's method (BL). The NW scheme is the most classical one for commercial GNSS receivers. It is often used as an authoritative benchmark for assessing carrier-to-noise power estimation schemes. The MM scheme is the least biased solution among them, and the BL scheme is a simpler scheme than the MM scheme. This paper focuses on the less biased estimation with low complexity when the residual phase noise remains, then proposes a novel carrier-to-noise power ratio estimation scheme with low complexity for GNSS receivers. The asymptotic bias of the proposed scheme is derived and compared with others, and the simulation results demonstrate that the complexity of the proposed scheme is lowest among them, while the estimation performance of the proposed scheme is similar to those of the BL and MM schemes in normal and high gained reception environments.

This paper presents a fingerprint database construction method for WLAN RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator)-based indoor positioning. When RSSI is used for indoor positioning, the fingerprint method can achieve more accurate positioning than trilateration and centroid methods. However, a FD (Fingerprint Database) must be constructed before positioning. This step is a very laborious process. To reduce the drawbacks of the fingerprint method, a radio propagation model-based FD construction method is presented. In this method, an FD can be constructed by a simulator. Experimental results show that the constructed FD-based positioning has a 3.17m (CEP) error. In this paper, a spatial correlation method is presented to estimate the NLOS(Non-Line of Sight) error included in the FD constructed by a simulator. As a result, the NLOS error of the FD is reduced and the performance of the error compensated FD-based positioning is improved. The experimental results show that the enhanced FD-based positioning has a 2.58m (CEP) error that is a reasonable performance for indoor LBS (Location Based Service).

Due to the complicated steel structure and safety concern, it is very difficult to deploy wireless networks in power plants. This paper presents a hybrid network, named as $P^2HYMN$ (Power Plant HYbrid Maintenance Network), encompassing PLC (Power Line Communication), TLC (Telephone Line Communication), and Wireless LAN. The design goal of $P^2HYMN$ is to integrate multimedia data such as design drawings of control equipment, process data, and video image data for maintenance operation in electric power plants. A Multiplex Line Communication (MLC) device was designed and implemented to integrate PLC, TLC, and Wireless LAN into $P^2HYMN$. Performance test of $P^2HYMN$ has been conducted on a testbed under various conditions. The throughput of TLC was shown as 39 Mbps. Because the bandwidth requirement per camera is 8.5 Mbps on average, TLC is expected to support more thant four video camera at the same time.