• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2024.07a
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• pp.1308-1308
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• 2024

Computer vision techniques have been widely employed in automated construction management to enhance safety and prevent accidents at construction sites. However, previous research in the field of vision-based approaches has often overlooked small-sized construction tools. These tools present unique challenges in data collection due to their diverse shapes and sizes, as well as in improving model performance to accurately detect and classify them. To address these challenges, this study aimed to enhance the performance of vision-based classifiers for small-sized construction tools, including bucket, cord reel, hammer, and tacker, by leveraging synthetic images generated from a 3D virtual environment. Three classifiers were developed using the YOLOv8 algorithm, each differing in the composition of the training dataset: (i) 'Real-4000', trained on 4,000 authentic images collected through web crawling methods (1,000 images per object); (ii) 'Hybrid-4000', consisting of 2,000 authentic images and 2,000 synthetic images; and (iii) 'Hybrid-8000', incorporating 4,000 authentic images and 4,000 synthetic images. To validate the performance of the classifiers, 144 directly-captured images for each object were collected from real construction sites as the test dataset. The mean Average Precision at an IoU threshold of 0.5 (mAP_0.5) for the classifiers was 79.6%, 90.8%, and 94.8%, respectively, with the 'Hybrid-8000' model demonstrating the highest performance. Notably, for objects with significant shape variations, the use of synthetic images led to the enhanced performance of the vision-based classifiers. Moreover, the practical applicability of the proposed classifiers was validated through confidence scores, particularly between the 'Hybrid-4000' and 'Hybrid-8000' models. Statistical analysis using t-tests indicated that the performance of the 'Hybrid-4000' model would either matched or exceeded that of the 'Hybrid-8000'model based on confidence scores. Thus, employing the 'Hybrid-4000' model may be preferable in terms of data collection efficiency and processing time, contributing to enhanced safety and real-time automation and robotics in construction practices.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.204-214
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• 2018

Since LIDAR is advantageous for accurate information acquisition and realization of a high-resolution 3D image based on characteristics that can be precisely measured, it is essential to autonomous navigation systems that require acquisition and judgment of accurate peripheral information without user intervention. Recently, as an autonomous navigation system applying LIDAR has been utilized in human living space, it is necessary to solve the eye-safety problem, and to make reliable judgment through accurate obstacle recognition in various environments. In this paper, we construct a single-shot LIDAR system (SSLs) using a 1550-nm eye-safe light source, and report the analysis method and results of LIDAR signals for various measurement environments, reflective materials, and material angles. We analyze the signals of materials with different reflectance in each measurement environment by using a 5% Al reflector and a building wall located at a distance of 25 m, under indoor, daytime, and nighttime conditions. In addition, signal analysis of the angle change of the material is carried out, considering actual obstacles at various angles. This signal analysis has the merit of possibly confirming the correlation between measurement environment, reflection conditions, and LIDAR signal, by using the SNR to determine the reliability of the received information, and the timing jitter, which is an index of the accuracy of the distance information.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2012

In recent years, mobile phone has experienced an extremely fast evolution. It is equipped with high-quality color displays, high resolution cameras, and real-time accelerated 3D graphics. In addition, some other features are includes GPS sensor and Digital Compass, etc. This evolution advent significantly helps the application developers to use the power of smart-phones, to create a rich environment that offers a wide range of services and exciting possibilities. To date mobile AR in outdoor research there are many popular location-based AR services, such Layar and Wikitude. These systems have big limitation the AR contents hardly overlaid on the real target. Another research is context-based AR services using image recognition and tracking. The AR contents are precisely overlaid on the real target. But the real-time performance is restricted by the retrieval time and hardly implement in large scale area. In our work, we exploit to combine advantages of location-based AR with context-based AR. The system can easily find out surrounding landmarks first and then do the recognition and tracking with them. The proposed system mainly consists of two major parts-landmark browsing module and annotation module. In landmark browsing module, user can view an augmented virtual information (information media), such as text, picture and video on their smart-phone viewfinder, when they pointing out their smart-phone to a certain building or landmark. For this, landmark recognition technique is applied in this work. SURF point-based features are used in the matching process due to their robustness. To ensure the image retrieval and matching processes is fast enough for real time tracking, we exploit the contextual device (GPS and digital compass) information. This is necessary to select the nearest and pointed orientation landmarks from the database. The queried image is only matched with this selected data. Therefore, the speed for matching will be significantly increased. Secondly is the annotation module. Instead of viewing only the augmented information media, user can create virtual annotation based on linked data. Having to know a full knowledge about the landmark, are not necessary required. They can simply look for the appropriate topic by searching it with a keyword in linked data. With this, it helps the system to find out target URI in order to generate correct AR contents. On the other hand, in order to recognize target landmarks, images of selected building or landmark are captured from different angle and distance. This procedure looks like a similar processing of building a connection between the real building and the virtual information existed in the Linked Open Data. In our experiments, search range in the database is reduced by clustering images into groups according to their coordinates. A Grid-base clustering method and user location information are used to restrict the retrieval range. Comparing the existed research using cluster and GPS information the retrieval time is around 70~80ms. Experiment results show our approach the retrieval time reduces to around 18~20ms in average. Therefore the totally processing time is reduced from 490~540ms to 438~480ms. The performance improvement will be more obvious when the database growing. It demonstrates the proposed system is efficient and robust in many cases.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.151-160
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• 2020

This study aims to figure out the status of university start-up education and support scheme, which are becoming more important as a major project of recent university policy, and to present policy tasks for promoting university start-ups by analyzing problems. A survey on education and support scheme about start-up was carried out from 800 students including those on leave of absence at D university located in metropolitan area and the analysis results are as follows. First, perception about start-up was highly positive due to various start-up education and support scheme from universities, but it was surveyed that university students have still low willingness to challenge start-up. Second, the biggest reason why university students avoid the start-up is 'the risk of start-up failure' at 40.8%, followed by 'Prioritizing getting a job' at 24.9% and 'lack of knowledge on start-up' at 13.4%. Also, difficulty from those who have already started business was mainly financing at 26.9%. The second was 14.0% for securing manpower, and the third was 11.8% for technology development. Third, the necessity of start-up education was in the order of 'starting-up' > 'preparing to start-up' > 'no intention to start-up'. The reason for the necessity of start-up education was 'motivation for various career choices' with 24.8%, followed by 'acquisition of various knowledge and skills for start-up' with 23.9%. Finally, efforts are needed to understand the importance of public relations for start-up policies in universities and figure out the problems of the start-up support scheme. The start-up education and support scheme should reflect the needs of university students, who are actual policy consumers, by shifting away from the method provided by existing suppliers.