In this paper, a novel lateral control system is proposed for the purpose of improving lane keeping performance which is independent from GPS signals. Lane keeping is a key function for the realization of unmanned driving systems. In order to obtain this objective, a vision sensor based real-time lane detection scheme is developed. Furthermore, we employ a data fusion along with a real-time steering angle of the test vehicle to improve its lane keeping performance. The fused direction data can be obtained by an IMU sensor and vision sensor. The performance of the proposed system was verified by computer simulations along with field tests using MOHAVE, a commercial vehicle from Kia Motors of Korea.

When developing a vehicle control system, simulation methods are widely used to validate the whole system in the early development phase. With this regard, the simulator should correctly behave just like the real parts that are not yet implemented while interacting with already implemented parts in real-time. However, most simulators cannot provide functionally and temporally accurate behaviors of the target system. In order to overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a novel real-time simulation technique that can efficiently simulate the temporal behavior as well as the functional behavior of the simulation target system.

In this paper, a remote emergency stop system to improve the safety of an automated driving vehicle is proposed. One of the most serious problems of the previous wireless remote emergency system is that it does not work when the wireless channel is damaged in case of an emergency because it is composed of a single communication channel. Therefore, the proposed remote emergency stop system composed of a portable wireless remote system and a stationary wireless remote system is designed and the remote emergency stop system for automated driving vehicles is developed. By applying it to an automated driving vehicle to check it's performance, the wireless remote system is tested. Emergency stops using the portable wireless remote system is tested when the stationary wireless remote system is disconnected. Also, emergency stops using the stationary wireless remote system are tested when the portable wireless remote system is disconnected. The results of the emergency stop test show a satisfactory performance.

This paper presents a model predictive control (MPC) approach to control the steering angle in an autonomous vehicle. In designing a highly automated driving control algorithm, one of the research issues is to cope with probable risky situations for enhancement of safety. While human drivers maneuver the vehicle, they determine the appropriate steering angle and acceleration based on the predictable trajectories of surrounding vehicles. Likewise, it is required that the automated driving control algorithm should determine the desired steering angle and acceleration with the consideration of not only the current states of surrounding vehicles but also their predictable behaviors. Then, in order to guarantee safety to the possible change of traffic situation surrounding the subject vehicle during a finite time-horizon, we define a safe driving envelope with the consideration of probable risky behaviors among the predicted probable behaviors of surrounding vehicles over a finite prediction horizon. For the control of the vehicle while satisfying the safe driving envelope and system constraints over a finite prediction horizon, a MPC approach is used in this research. At each time step, MPC based controller computes the desired steering angle to keep the subject vehicle in the safe driving envelope over a finite prediction horizon. Simulation and experimental tests show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

This paper proposes a method to determine vehicle driving state using the driving characteristics index. This index is a quantitative value to classify the driving state of a vehicle with its velocity and heading angle in that instant. It can classify driving state into straight driving, lane changing driving and curve driving in real time. In addition, the number of positional information is movably set up by designed region of interest. The proposed index is expressed on the stable driving states. Each driving state has characteristic tendency, and is compared with index distributional areas. The proposed method is verified by the actual driving experiment on the KATECH proving ground.

Autonomous driving is no longer atechnology of the future since the development of autonomous vehicles has now been realized, and many technologies have already been developed for the convenience of drivers. For example, autonomous vehicles are one of the most important drive assistant systems. Among these many drive assistant systems, Cruise Control Systems are now a typical technology. This system constantly maintains a vehicle's speed and distance from a vehicle in front by using Radar or LiDAR sensors in real time. Cruise Control Systems do not only serve their original role, but also fulfill another role as a 'Driving Safety' measure as they can detect a situation that a driver did not predict and can intervene by assuming a vehicle's longitude control. However, these systems have the limitation of only focusing on driver safety. Therefore, in this paper, an Intelligent Cruise Control System that utilizes the path planning method and GIS is proposed to overcome some existing limitations.

In order to develop an active safety system which avoids or mitigates collisions with preceding vehicles such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB), accurate state estimation of the nearby vehicles is very important. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed using 3 dynamic models to better estimate the state of a vehicle which has various dynamic patterns in both longitudinal and lateral direction. In particular, the proposed algorithm is based on the Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) method which employs three different dynamic models, in cruise mode, lateral maneuver mode and longitudinal maneuver mode. In addition, a Probabilistic Data Association Filter (PDAF) is utilized as a data association algorithm which can improve the reliability of the measurement under a clutter environment. In order to verify the performance of the proposed method, it is simulated in comparison with a Kalman filter method which employs a single dynamic model. Finally, the proposed method is validated using radar data obtained from the field test in the proving ground.

In this paper, a nonlinear optimization problem is proposed to obtain a structured static output feedback controller for discrete time linear systems. The proposed optimization problem has LMI (Linear Matrix Inequality) constraints and a non-convex objective function. Using the conditional gradient method, we can obtain suboptimal solutions of the proposed optimization problem. Numerical examples show the effectives of the proposed approach.

This paper presents a method to enhance tracking performance of an input-constrained bilinear system using MPC (Model Predictive Control) when a feasible tracking control is known. Since the error dynamics induced by the known tracking control is asymptotically stable, there exists a Lyapunov function for the stable error dynamics. By defining a cost function including the Lyapunov function and describing tracking performance, an MPC law is derived. In simulation, the performance of the proposed MPC law is demonstrated by applying it to a converter model.

In direct vehicle teleoperation, a human operator drives a vehicle at a distance through a pair of master and slave device. However, if there is time delay, it is difficult to remotely drive the vehicle due to slow response. In order to address this problem, we introduced a novel methodology of shared vehicle teleoperation using a virtual driving interface. The methodology was developed with four components: 1) virtual driving environment, 2) interface for virtual driving environment, 3) path generator based on virtual driving trajectory, 4) path following controller. Experimental results showed the effectiveness of the proposed approach in simple and cluttered driving environment as well. In the experiments, we compared two sampling methods, fixed sampling time and user defined instant, and finally merged method showed best remote driving performance in term of completion time and number of collision.

We present a novel method to model the body posture of a worm for vision-based automatic monitoring and analysis. The worm considered in this study is a Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), which is popularly used for research in biological science and engineering. We model the posture by an open chain of a few curved or rigid line segments, in contrast to previously published approaches wherein a large number of small rigid elements are connected for the modeling. Each link segment is represented by only two parameters: an arc angle and an arc length for a curved segment, or an orientation angle and a link length for a straight line segment. Links in the proposed method can be readily related using the Denavit-Hartenberg convention due to similarities to the kinematics of an articulated manipulator. Our method was tested with real worm images, and accurate results were obtained.

This paper proposes an adaptive RRT (Rapidly-exploring Random Tree) for path planning of high DOF multibody robotic system. For an efficient path planning in high-dimensional configuration space, the proposed algorithm adaptively selects the robot bodies depending on the complexity of path planning. Then, the RRT grows only using the DOFs corresponding with the selected bodies. Since the RRT is extended in the configuration space with adaptive dimensionality, the RRT can grow in the lower dimensional configuration space. Thus the adaptive RRT method executes a faster path planning and smaller DOF for a robot. We implement our algorithm for path planning of 19 DOF robot, AMIRO. The results from our simulations show that the adaptive RRT-based path planner is more efficient than the basic RRT-based path planner.

This paper describes extraction methods of five different types of geometrical features (line, arc, corner, polynomial curve, NURBS curve) from the obtained raw data by using a two-dimensional laser range finder (LRF). Natural features with their covariance matrices play a key role in the realization of feature-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which can be used to represent the environment and correct the pose of mobile robot. The covariance matrices of these geometrical features are derived in detail based on the raw sensor data and the uncertainty of LRF. Several comparison are made and discussed to highlight the advantages and drawbacks of each type of geometrical feature. Finally, the extracted features from raw sensor data obtained by using a LRF in an indoor environment are used to validate the proposed extraction methods.

This paper proposes a SMD (surface mounting device) classification method for the PCB assembly inspection machines. The package types of SMD components should be classified to create the job program of the inspection machine. In order to reduce the creation time of job program, we developed the automatic classification algorithm for the SMD packages. We identified the chip-type packages by color and edge distribution of the images. The input images are transformed into the HSI color model, and the binarized histroms are extracted for H and S spaces. Also the edges are extracted from the binarized image, and quantized histograms are obtained for horizontal and vertical direction. The neural network is then applied to classify the package types from the histogram inputs. The experimental results are presented to verify the usefulness of the proposed method.

In this paper, a GNSS interference detection algorithm based on an adaptive fading Kalman filter is proposed to detect a spoofing signal which is one of the threatening GNSS intentional interferences. To detect and mitigate the spoofing signal, the fading factor of the filter is used as a detection parameter. For simulation, the effect of the spoofing signal is modeled by the ramp type bias error of the pseudorange to emulate a smart spoofer and the change of the fading factor value according to ramp type bias error is quantitatively analyzed. In addition, the detection threshold is established to detect the spoofing signal by analyzing the change of the error covariance and the effect of spoofing is mitigated by controlling the Kalman gain of the filter. To verify the performance analysis of the proposed algorithm, various simulations are implemented. Through the results of simulations, we confirmed that the proposed algorithm works well.