• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.381-390
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• 2010

This paper describes a procedure of the map-based localization for mobile robots by using a sensor fusion technique in structured environments. A combination of various sensors with different characteristics and limited sensibility has advantages in view of complementariness and cooperation to obtain better information on the environment. In this paper, for robust self-localization of a mobile robot with a monocular camera and a laser structured light sensor, environment information acquired from two sensors is combined and fused by a Bayesian sensor fusion technique based on the probabilistic reliability function of each sensor predefined through experiments. For the self-localization using the monocular vision, the robot utilizes image features consisting of vertical edge lines from input camera images, and they are used as natural landmark points in self-localization process. However, in case of using the laser structured light sensor, it utilizes geometrical features composed of corners and planes as natural landmark shapes during this process, which are extracted from range data at a constant height from the navigation floor. Although only each feature group of them is sometimes useful to localize mobile robots, all features from the two sensors are simultaneously used and fused in term of information for reliable localization under various environment conditions. To verify the advantage of using multi-sensor fusion, a series of experiments are performed, and experimental results are discussed in detail.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.64-73
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• 2012

In this paper, a new land preview system using laser range finder based on heave estimation algorithm is proposed. The proposed land preview system is an equipment which measures the shape of forward topography for autonomous vehicle. To implement this land preview system, the laser range finder is generally used because of its wide measuring range and robustness under various environmental condition. Then the current location of the vehicle has to be known to generate the shape of forward topography and sensors based on acceleration such as IMU and accelerometer are generally utilized to measure heave motion in the conventional land preview system. However the drawback to these sensors is that they are too expensive for low-cost vehicle such as mobile robot and their measurement error is increased for mobile robot with abrupt acceleration. In order to overcome this drawback, an algorithm that estimates heave motion using the information of odometer and previously measured topography is proposed in this paper. The proposed land preview system based on the heave estimation algorithm is verified through simulation and experiments for various terrain using a simulator and a real system.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.37 no.8
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• pp.11-23
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• 2000

Head-eye calibration is a process for estimating the unknown orientation and position of a camera with respect to a mobile platform, such as a robot wrist. We present a new head-eye calibration technique which can be applied for platforms with rather limited motion capability In particular, the proposed calibration technique can be applied to find the relative orientation of a camera mounted on a linear translation platform which does not have rotation capability. The algorithm find the rotation using a calibration data obtained from pure Translation of a camera along two different axes We have derived a calibration algorithm exploiting the rectification technique in such a way that the rectified images should satisfy the epipolar constraint. We present the calibration procedure for both the rotation and the translation components of a camera relative to the platform coordinates. The efficacy of the algorithm is demonstrated through simulations and real experiments.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2006.10c
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• pp.536-538
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• 2006

The most important factor of mobile robot is to build a map for surrounding environment and estimate its localization. This paper proposes a real-time localization and map building method through 3-D reconstruction using scale invariant feature from monocular camera. Mobile robot attached monocular camera looking wall extracts scale invariant features in each image using SIFT(Scale Invariant Feature Transform) as it follows wall. Matching is carried out by the extracted features and matching feature map that is transformed into absolute coordinates using 3-D reconstruction of point and geometrical analysis of surrounding environment build, and store it map database. After finished feature map building, the robot finds some points matched with previous feature map and find its pose by affine parameter in real time. Position error of the proposed method was maximum. 8cm and angle error was within $10^{\circ}$.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.700-710
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• 2009

A computer vision technique of estimating the location of an unmanned ground vehicle is proposed. Identifying the location of the unmaned vehicle is very important task for automatic navigation of the vehicle. Conventional positioning sensors may fail to work properly in some real situations due to internal and external interferences. Given a DSM(Digital Surface Map), location of the vehicle can be estimated by the registration of the DSM and multiview range images obtained at the vehicle. Registration of the DSM and range images yields the 3D transformation from the coordinates of the range sensor to the reference coordinates of the DSM. To estimate the vehicle position, we first register a range image to the DSM coarsely and then refine the result. For coarse registration, we employ a fast random sample matching method. After the initial position is estimated and refined, all subsequent range images are registered by applying a pair-wise registration technique between range images. To reduce the accumulation error of pair-wise registration, we periodically refine the registration between range images and the DSM. Virtual environment is established to perform several experiments using a virtual vehicle. Range images are created based on the DSM by modeling a real 3D sensor. The vehicle moves along three different path while acquiring range images. Experimental results show that registration error is about under 1.3m in average.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.717-722
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• 2001

This paper presents a methodology on the backward path tracking control of a trailer type robot which consists of two parts: a tractor and a trailer. It is difficult to control the motion of a trailer vehicle since its dynamics is non-holonomic. Therefore, in this paper, the modeling and parameter estimation of the system using a real-coded genetic algorithm(RCGA) is proposed and a backward path tracking control algorithm is then obtained based on the linearized model. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.173-180
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• 2006

A key component of autonomous navigation of intelligent home robot is localization and map building with recognized features from the environment. To validate this, accurate measurement of relative location between robot and features is essential. In this paper, we proposed relative localization algorithm based on 3D reconstruction of scale invariant features of two images which are captured from two parallel cameras. We captured two images from parallel cameras which are attached in front of robot and detect scale invariant features in each image using SIFT(scale invariant feature transform). Then, we performed matching for the two image's feature points and got the relative location using 3D reconstruction for the matched points. Stereo camera needs high precision of two camera's extrinsic and matching pixels in two camera image. Because we used two cameras which are different from stereo camera and scale invariant feature point and it's easy to setup the extrinsic parameter. Furthermore, 3D reconstruction does not need any other sensor. And the results can be simultaneously used by obstacle avoidance, map building and localization. We set 20cm the distance between two camera and capture the 3frames per second. The experimental results show :t6cm maximum error in the range of less than 2m and ${\pm}15cm$ maximum error in the range of between 2m and 4m.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.133-139
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• 2015

This paper surveys vision based autonomous navigation technologies for unmanned systems. Main branches of visual navigation technologies are visual servoing, visual odometry, and visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Visual servoing provides velocity input which guides mobile system to desired pose. This input velocity is calculated from feature difference between desired image and acquired image. Visual odometry is the technology that estimates the relative pose between frames of consecutive image. This can improve the accuracy when compared with the exisiting dead-reckoning methods. Visual SLAM aims for constructing map of unknown environment and determining mobile system's location simultaneously, which is essential for operation of unmanned systems in unknown environments. The trend of visual navigation is grasped by examining foreign research cases related to visual navigation technology.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.132-139
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• 2015

Visual SLAM(Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) has been used widely to estimate a mobile robot's location. Visual SLAM estimates relative motions with static visual features over image sequence. Because visual SLAM methods assume generally static features in the environment, we cannot obtain precise results in dynamic situation including many moving objects: cars and human beings. This paper presents a stereo vision based SLAM method in dynamic environment. First, we extract disparity map with stereo vision and compute optical flow. We then compute disparity change that is the estimated flow field between stereo views. After examining the disparity change value, we detect ROIs(Region Of Interest) in disparity space to determine dynamic scene objects. In indoor environment, many structural planes like walls may be determined as false dynamic elements. To solve this problem, we segment the scene into planar structure. More specifically, disparity values by the stereo vision are projected to X-Z plane and we employ Hough transform to determine planes. In final step, we remove ROIs nearby the walls and discriminate static scene elements in indoor environment. The experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain stable performance in dynamic environment.