• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.347-352
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• 2022

The paper presents how to update impedance control parameters for dual-arm manipulators using EMG signals and motions of the operator. Since the hand motions of the dual-arm are modeled to be the mass-spring-damper system in this paper, the impedance parameter update method is an important issue to reflect the operator's force. However, task space inertia to be used as the mass parameter goes to infinity if the manipulator approaches a kinematic singularity. To alleviate this issue, the impedance (stiffness and damping) parameters are divided with a diagonal element of the task space inertia. Also, the stiffness and damping matrices are updated using the normalized EMG signals captured from the operator's forearm. Through this process, the motion of the dual-arm manipulator is more stabilized even though it approaches the kinematic singularity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.580-589
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• 2014

Demands for automation in the cell production process of IT products are becoming increasingly sophisticated. In particular, the dual-arm robot has drawn attention as a solution because it has a flexibility and works similarly to humans. In this paper, we propose an automation system for cellular phone packing processes using two dual-arm robots. Applied robots are designed with specifications to meet the requirements of cellular phone packing jobs. In addition, a robotic cell production system is proposed by applying a method of task allocation for efficient packing of cellular phones. Specifically, a task is assigned to reduce takt-time and to avoid collision between two robots. Finally, we discuss some experimental results that include the packing job of five unit boxes with seven kinds of accessories.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.195-203
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• 2007

Together with the development of ubiquitous computing technology and robot technology, intelligent type robots are being utilized in many areas and the range is expected to become wider and wider. Among many service robots, the educational robots are being diversely studied in the field with the concept of r-Learning. Presently, teaching assistant robots require a lot of HRI studies prior to their practical use in the very near future and are not sufficient yet. Especially, the reactions of students based of the styles of robots (e.g. serious robot, playful robot) are very important in producing robot contents but there has been no case study on them. Therefore, in this study, the appearance of the IROBI was changed to become a teaching assistant robot and was used to test and compare elementary school students' interest, achievement and concentration depending on the styles of robot (playful, serious). The results showed that the interest was high in the group that had studied with the playful robot. The achievement however, did not show significant relations with the style of robot and that the concentration was high in the group that had studied with the serious robot.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.891-897
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• 2010

This paper proposes a cooperative control algorithm for a dual-arms robot which is carrying an object to the desired location. When the dual-arms robot is carrying an object from the start to the goal point, the optimal path in terms of safety, energy, and time needs to be selected among the numerous possible paths. In order to quantify the carrying efficiency of dual-arms, DAMM (Dual Arm Manipulability Measure) has been defined and applied for the decision of the optimal path. The DAMM is defined as the intersection of the manipulability ellipsoids of the dual-arms, while the manipulability measure indicates a relationship between the joint velocity and the Cartesian velocity for each arm. The cost function for achieving the optimal path is defined as the summation of the distance to the goal and inverse of this DAMM, which aims to generate the efficient motion to the goal. It is confirmed that the optimal path planning keeps higher manipulability through the short distance path by using computer simulation. To show the effectiveness of this cooperative control algorithm experimentally, a 5-DOF dual-arm robot with distributed controllers for synchronization control has been developed and used for the experiments.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.100-106
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• 2020

In the agricultural field, interests in research using robots for fruit harvesting are continuously increasing. Dual arm manipulators are promising because of its abilities like task-distribution and role-sharing. To operate it efficiently, the task sequence must be planned adequately. In our previous study, a collision-free path planning method based on a genetic algorithm is proposed for dual arm manipulators doing tasks cooperatively. However, in order to simplify the complicated collision-check problem, the movement between tasks of two robots should be synchronized, and thus there is a problem that the robots must wait and resume their movement. In this paper, we propose a heuristic algorithm that can reduce the total time of the optimal solution obtained by using the previously proposed genetic algorithm. It iteratively desynchronizes the task sequence of two robots and reduces the waiting time. For evaluation, the proposed algorithm is applied to the same work as the previous study. As a result, we can obtain a faster solution having 22.57 s than that of the previous study having 24.081 s. It will be further studied to apply the proposed algorithm to the fruit harvesting.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.20-28
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• 2013

Large workspace and strong grasping force are required when a robot manipulates big and/or heavy objects. In that situation, bimanual manipulation is more useful than unimanual manipulation. However, the control of both hands to manipulate an object requires a more complex model compared to unimanual manipulation. Learning by human demonstration is a useful technique for a robot to learn a model. In this paper, we propose an imitation learning method of bimanual object manipulation by human demonstrations. For robust imitation of bimanual object manipulation, movement trajectories of two hands are encoded as a movement trajectory of the object and a force trajectory to grasp the object. The movement trajectory of the object is modeled by using the framework of dynamic movement primitives, which represent demonstrated movements with a set of goal-directed dynamic equations. The force trajectory to grasp an object is also modeled as a dynamic equation with an adjustable force term. These equations have an adjustable force term, where locally weighted regression and multiple linear regression methods are employed, to imitate complex non-linear movements of human demonstrations. In order to show the effectiveness our proposed method, a movement skill of pick-and-place in simulation environment is shown.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.137-146
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• 2021

When controlling manipulator, degree of freedom is lost in singularity so specific joint velocity does not propagate to the end effector. In addition, control problem occurs because jacobian inverse matrix can not be calculated. To avoid singularity, we apply Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient(DDPG), algorithm of reinforcement learning that rewards behavior according to actions then determines high-reward actions in simulation. DDPG uses off-policy that uses 𝝐-greedy policy for selecting action of current time step and greed policy for the next step. In the simulation, learning is given by negative reward when moving near singulairty, and positive reward when moving away from the singularity and moving to target point. The reward equation consists of distance to target point and singularity, manipulability, and arrival flag. Dual arm manipulators hold long rod at the same time and conduct experiments to avoid singularity by simulated path. In the learning process, if object to be avoided is set as a space rather than point, it is expected that avoidance of obstacles will be possible in future research.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.130-140
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• 2011

This paper proposes an optimal posture for the task-oriented movement of dual arm manipulator. A stability criterion function which consists of three kinds of feature-representative parameters has been utilized to define the optimal posture. The first parameter is the force which is applied to the object. The torque of each joint and position of arm are attained from the current sensor and encoder, respectively. From these two data, the applied force to an object is estimated using sum of vectors of the joint torques estimated from the measured current. In order to investigate the robustness of each posture, the variation of the end-effector from the encoder information has been utilized as the second parameter. And for the last parameter for the optimality, the total energy consumption has been used. The total consuming energy of each posture can be computed from the current information and the battery voltage. The proposed robot structure consists of a mobile inverted pendulum and dual manipulators. In order to define the optimal posture for the each object, external disturbances are applied to the mobile inverted pendulum robot and the first and second parameters are investigated to find the optimal posture among the pre-selected most representative postures. Finally, the proposed optimal posture has been verified by the proposed stability criterion function which consists of total force to the object, the fluctuation of the end-effector position, and total energy consumption. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms has been verified and demonstrated through the practical simulations and real experiments.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.617-624
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• 2015

This paper describes the development of a wearable robot to assist the elbow muscle for use by elderly workers in aging societies. Various previously developed wearable robots have drawbacks in terms of their price, portability, and slow recognition of the wearer's intention. In this paper, emphasis is placed on the following features to minimize these drawbacks. The first feature is that an actuator is attached only at the elbow joint that withstands the highest moment during arm motion to reduce the weight, volume, and price of the robot and increase its practicality. The second is that operation of the wearable robot is divided into two modes, a tracking mode and a muscle strengthening mode, and the robot can automatically switch between these modes by analyzing the wearer's intention through the brachial muscle strength measuring device developed in this study. The assistive performance of the developed wearable robot is experimentally verified by motion tracking experiments without an external load and muscle strengthening experiments with an external load. During the muscle strengthening experiments, the power of the muscle of the upper arm is measured by a commercial electromyography (EMG) sensor. Motion tracking performance at a speed of $120^{\circ}/s$ and muscle assistance of over 60 % were obtained using our robot.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.654-660
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• 2020

Through the output of brain waves during muscle operation, this paper checks whether it is possible to find characteristic vectors of brain waves that are capable of dividing left and right movements by extracting brain waves in specific areas of muscle signal output that include the motion of the left and right muscles or the will of the user within EEG signals, where uncertainties exist considerably. A typical surface EMG and noninvasive brain wave extraction method does not exist to distinguish whether the signal is a motion through the degree of ionization by internal neurotransmitter and the magnitude of electrical conductivity. In the case of joint and motor control through normal robot control systems or electrical signals, signals that can be controlled by the transmission and feedback control of specific signals can be identified. However, the human body lacks evidence to find the exact protocols between the brain and the muscles. Therefore, in this paper, efficiency is verified by utilizing the results of application of CSP (Common Spatial Pattern) filter to verify that the left-hand and right-hand signals can be extracted through brainwave analysis when the subject's behavior is performed. In addition, we propose ways to obtain data through experimental design for verification, to verify the change in results with or without filter application, and to increase the accuracy of the classification.