• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.286-293
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• 2007

For safe walking of the people who are blind, walking assistance robot which can detecting and avoiding the obstacle was investigated. The implemented prototype walking assistance robot consists of a obstacle detecting module, a user interface using acoustic signal and a driving module. The obstacle detecting module uses 6 ultrasonic sensors those located at the front part of the robot can perceive the obstacle which is in 3 meter distances and $180^{\circ}$ degrees. It calculates the distance and degree from the obstacle using TOF (time of flight) method and decides the 3-dimensional location of the obstacle. The obstacle information is delivered to the user using acoustic alarm and guide sound. The robot is designed to avoid by itself when the obstacle is detecting and the user only follows it to safe walking. After the designed robot was implemented, driving and obstacle detecting experiments were carried out. The result showed that the designed walking assistance robot will help the people who are blind to walk around safe.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.353-359
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• 2017

This paper describes the design and manufacture of a ankle two-axis force sensor of a walking assist robot for hemiplegic leg patient. The walking assist robot for the hemiplegic leg patient can safely control the robot by detecting whether the foot wearing the walking assist robot is in contact with the obstacle or not. To do so, a two-axis force sensor should be attached to the robot's ankle. The sensor is used to measure the force of a patient's ankle lower part. The two-axis force sensor is composed of a Fx force sensor, a Fy force sensor and a pulley, and they detect the x and y direction forces, respectively. The two-axis force sensor was designed using by FEM(Finite Element Method), and manufactured using by strain-gages. The characteristics experiment of the two-axis force sensor was carried out respectively. The test results indicated that the interference error of the two-axis force sensor was less than 1.2%, the repeatability error and the non-linearity of the two-axis force sensor was less than 0.04% respectively. Therefore, the fabricated two-axis force sensor can be used to measure the force of ankle lower part in the walking assist robot.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.22 no.3_1spc
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• pp.600-606
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• 2013

This paper describes the development of a novel walking assistance robot for the elderly and infirm. In the case of simple walking assistance devices, the walking safety and effectiveness are somewhat low; hence, caregivers are frequently required. The walking assistance robot developed in this research is capable of securely and conveniently assisting a walking user by using electric motors and various devices without a caregiver. The main features include the following. First, the walking safety is improved by using a pelvis supporter, and the robot is able to follow the user effectively by means of ergonomic motion sensors and electric powered wheels. Second, it is possible to adjust the load applied to the lower body by adjusting the height of the pelvis supporter. Finally, it is possible to inform the approximate distance and direction of any obstacle around the robot using the sounds and vibrations for the blind and the hearing impaired. The performance of the developed walking assistance robot was successfully verified using a walking assistance test in a narrow-corridor environment.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.1186-1193
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• 1991

This paper proposed a trajectory controlmethod for a robot manipulator by using neural networks. The total torque for a manipulator is a sum of the linear feedback controller torque and the neural network feedfoward controller torque. The proposed neural network is a multilayer neural network with time delay elements, and learns the inverse dynamics of manipulator by means of PD(propotional denvative)controller error torque. The error backpropagation (BP) learning neural network controller does not directly require manipulator dynamics information. Instead, it learns the information by training and stores the information and connection weights. The control effects of the proposed system are verified by computer simulation.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.15-24
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• 2014

In 2005, there was a partial revision of the Act on the Promotion of Education for the Handicapped people, so that students with health impairments would be able to receive special education support. Since the amendment of the bill, to support them classified into weak people in education, education support systems have been proposed and settled so that they may receive the support for free. According to the pre-study, after the amendment of this bill, there has been many studies on the form of educational service to support them, and recently, there have been a lot of researches to investigate their satisfaction with the current services and draw its problems. And yet these studies have been carried out by the preceeding researchers at the drawing of problems, but have a limitation to present fundamental countermeasures to the problems. Therefore, this study attempted to understand the meaning of health impairment through the pre-study and investigate the forms of the services currently supporting them and analyze the problem of each service. In addition, to solve the identified problems, a new support system was proposed. In order to confirm the performance of the system, we design the user satisfaction survey composed of a Likert 5-point scale per each question, and to make the task, comparing stories and clapping for increasing quality of their subjective evaluation about the image and voice transmission when the user uses it. As a result, in the overall evaluation of the robot system, the average score of each question was recorded to 4.31 points, and through the two tasks, it was found that there were effective data transmission of image and voice.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2017.04a
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• pp.143-143
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• 2017

산업이 고도화됨에 따라 자동화 기계 및 로봇에 의해 대량 생산 되는 품목과 달리, 작업 절차의 비정형성, 비연속성 등으로 인해 여전히 농업에 많은 인력이 투입되고 있다. 국제노동기구에 따르면, 세계 인력의 절반이 농업 인력에 해당하고 작업 중 부상이나 사망 등으로 인해 가장 위험한 직업군 중 하나에 해당하는 것으로 나타났다. 시설 재배 농업의 경우, 노동집약적인 온실 내 작업 특성상 잘못된 자세로 작업하거나 지나친 작업량 등으로 인해 작업자에게 근골격계 질환이 발생할 수 있다. 근골격계 질환으로 인해 작업효율이 감소하거나 생산비용의 증가로 이어질 수 있으며, 농가 수익에 손실이 발생할 수 있다. 이에 본 연구에서는 현행 시설 재배 농업에서 사용되는 레일 전동 작업차를 이용하여 작업자가 토마토를 수확할 때의 신체에 대한 농작업의 부하를 평가하고자 하였다. 작업차를 이용한 주요 작업 절차는 작물로부터 과실 수확, 과실 상자에 과실 투입, 빈 과실 상자와 가득 찬 과실 상자의 교대, 작업차 위의 과실 상자를 운반용 파레트에 하역하는 순서로 이루어지는 것을 확인하였다. 비디오장비로 촬영된 일련의 농작업 과정을 OWAS, RULA, REBA와 같은 체크리스트형 인간공학적 작업 부하 평가 도구를 이용하여 평가한 결과, 기존 레일 전동 작업차를 이용한 농작업의 근골격계 질환 유발 가능성을 확인하였다. 동작별 위험성을 토대로 근골격계 질환 유발 가능성이 높아 개선이 필요한 농작업 동작을 선정하였다. 선정된 동작은 실험실 내 환경에서 피실험자를 통한 모의 동작의 생체 신호 계측을 통해 신체 부하 정도를 정량적으로 측정할 수 있으며, 보조가 필요한 신체 부위를 특정하거나 안전성 확보가 필요한 동작에 대한 증거가 될 수 있다. 본 연구를 통해 향후 토마토 온실 내 신선도 유지를 위한 레일 전동 작업차의 개발에 작업자의 안전과 효율성 향상을 위한 인간공학적 설계를 적용할 수 있을 것으로 기대한다.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.195-203
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• 2013

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of early Robot-assisted training on gait ability, function and ADL in patients with stroke. Methods: 26 patients with stroke were recruited for this study. The subjects were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (EG) or the control group (CG), with 13 patients in each group. All subjects received a routine physical therapy. The robot-assisted training was for 30 min in the case of the EG subjects. The assessment tools of this study involved the gait ability, balance ability, function and ADL. The measurements were recorded before the intervention and after the intervention. Results: EG subjects and CG subjects, the variables measured after the intervention significantly differed from gait ability, balance ability, function and ADL without the FMA (p<0.05). The FMA was only effective experimental group after intervention. Also, there were significant differences in gait ability, balance ability, function and ADL without the FMA at post-test between the 2 groups (p<0.05). Conclusion: The findings indicate that early robot-assisted training exerts a positive effect on gait ability, balance ability, function and ADL in patients with stroke. This result indicates the possibility of application of the early Robot-assisted training to the management for stroke patients. Further studies are required to generalize the result for this study.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.163-174
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• 2020

PURPOSE: This study examined the effects of Robot Tilt-table Training (RTT) on the lower extremity strength, balance, gait, and satisfaction with rehabilitation, in patients with subacute stroke (less than six months after stroke onset), and requiring intensive rehabilitation. METHODS: A total of 29 subacute stroke patients were divided into an RTT group (n = 14) and a Body Weight Support Treadmill Training (BWSTT) group (n = 15). The mean age of patients was 62 years. RTT and BWSTT were performed for four weeks, three times a week, for 30 minutes. Isometric strength of the lower extremities before and after intervention was compared by measuring the maximal voluntary isometric contraction of the lower extremity muscles. To compare the balance function, the center of pressure (COP) path-length and COP velocity were measured. Timed Up & Go test (TUG) and 10 Meter Walking Test (10 MWT) were evaluated to compare the gait function. A satisfaction with rehabilitation survey was conducted for subjective evaluation of the subject's satisfaction with the rehabilitation training imparted. RESULTS: In the intra-group comparison, both groups showed significant improvement in lower extremity strength, balance, gait, and satisfaction with rehabilitation, by comparing the parameters before and after the intervention (p < .05). Comparison of the amount of change between groups revealed significant improvement for all parameters in the RTT group, except for the 10 MWT (p < .05). CONCLUSION: Both groups are effective for all variables, but the RTT group showed enhanced efficacy for variables such as lower extremity strength, balance, gait, and satisfaction with rehabilitation, as compared to the BWSTT group.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.1677-1684
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• 2010

Recently, due to the development of mobile phone and supply of smart phone, many contents have been developed. Especially, since the small-sized cameras are equiped in mobile devices, people are interested in the image based contents development, and it also becomes important part in their practical use. Among them, the character recognition system can be widely used in the applications such as blind people guidance systems, automatic robot navigation systems, automatic video retrieval and indexing systems, automatic text translation systems. Therefore, this paper proposes a system that is able to extract text area from the natural images captured by smart phone camera. The individual characters are recognized and result is output in voice. Text areas are extracted using Adaboost algorithm and individual characters are recognized using error back propagated neural network.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.30-36
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• 2008

Recently, ere are many researches to improve the quality of e medical service such as Point of care (POC). To improve the quality of the medical service, not only good medical device but also more man power is required. Especially, the number of nurses are very few in Korea that is almost the lowest rank compared to OECD countries. If the simple repetition works of the nurse could be removed, it is possible to use the skillful nurse for other works and provide better quality services. There are many simple repetition works which the nurses have to do, such as replacing the ringer's solution. To replace the ringer's solution automatically, it is necessary to detect residual quantity of the ringer's solution. In this paper, image processing is used to detect the residual quantity of ringer's solution, and modified self quotient image (SQI) algorithm is used to strong background lights. After modified SQI algorithm, the simple histogram accumulation is done to find the residual quantity of the ringer's solution. The implemented algorithm could be use to replace the ringer's solution automatically or alarm to the nurses to replace the solution.