• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.271-274
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• 1998

Ultrasonic sensors are becoming indispensable components in every sector of automation equipments due to many advantages. But the main purposes of the noncontact sensing device are rather narrowly confined within object detection and distance measurement. To widen the realm of the applications to object recognition, ultrasonic sensors need to improve the recognition resolution to a certain amount. To resolve the problem of spatial resolution restriction, an increased number of the sensors in the forms of a linear array or 2-dimensional array of the sensor has been used. Also better resolution has been obtained by shifting the array in several steps using mechanical actuators. For an object recognition using ultrasonic sensors, measurements of distance, shift, oblique angle in certain ranges should be obtained. But a little attention has been paid to the measurement of angles. In this paper we propose a practical method for an object angular value detection in addition to distance measurement in ultrasonic sensor array system with little additional hardware burden. Using the established measurement look-up table for the variations of distance, shift, angle and transmitter voltages for each sensor characteristics, a set of different return echo signals for adjacent receivers are processed to provide enhanced angular value reading for an object.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.100-106
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• 2004

In this paper, we present a novel, rapid approach for the detection of brain tumors and deformity boundaries in medical images using a genetic algorithm with wavelet based preprocessing. The contour detection problem is formulated as an optimization process that seeks the contour of the object in a manner of minimizing an energy function based on an active contour model. The brain tumor segmentation contour, however, cannot be detected in case that a higher gradient intensity exists other than the interested brain tumor and deformities. Our method for discerning brain tumors and deformities from unwanted adjacent tissues is proposed. The proposed method can be used in medical image analysis because the exact contour of the brain tumor and deformities is followed by precise diagnosis of the deformities.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.616-624
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• 2002

An extraction method of central objects in the color images is proposed, in this paper. A central object is defined as a comparatively consist of the central object in the image. First of all. an input image and its decreased resolution images are segmented. Segmented regions are classified as the outer or the inner region. The outer region is adjacent regions are included by a same region in the decreased resolution image. Then core object regions and core background regions are selected from the inner region and the outer region respectively. Core object regions are the representative regions for the object and are selected by using the information about the information about the region size and location. Each inner regions is classified into foreground or background regions by comparing values of a color histogram intersection of the inner region against the core object region and the core background regions. The core object region and foreground regions consist of the central object in the image.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.648-657
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• 2004

A method of extracting central objects in color images without any prior-knowledge is proposed in this paper, which uses basically information of significant color distribution. A central object in an image is defined as a set of regions that lie around center of the image and have significant color distribution against the other surround (or background) regions. Significant colors in an image are first defined as the colors that are distributed more densely around center of the image than near borders. Then core object regions (CORs) are selected as the regions a lot of pixels of which have the significant colors. Finally, the adjacent regions to the CORs are iteratively merged if they are similar to the CORs but not to the background regions in color distribution. The merging result is accepted as the central object that may include differently color-characterized regions and/or two or more objects of interest. Usefulness of the significant colors in extracting the central object was verified through experiments on several kinds of test images. We expect that central objects shall be used usefully in image retrieval applications.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.617-624
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• 2004

This paper describes a new facial feature localization method that uses Adjacent Depth Differences(ADD) in 3D facial surface. In general, human recognize the extent of deepness or shallowness of region relatively, in depth, by comparing the neighboring depth information among regions of an object. The larger the depth difference between regions shows, the easier one can recognize each region. Using this principal, facial feature extraction will be easier, more reliable and speedy. 3D range images are used as input images. And ADD are obtained by differencing two range values, which are separated at a distance coordinate, both in horizontal and vertical directions. ADD and input image are analyzed to extract facial features, then localized a nose region, which is the most prominent feature in 3D facial surface, effectively and accurately.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.2519-2523
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• 2003

Ultrasonic sensors are widely used in mobile robot applications to recognize external environments, because they are cheap, easy to use, and robust under varying lighting conditions. In most cases, a single ultrasonic sensor is used to measure the distance to an object based on time-of-flight (TOF) information, whereas multiple sensors are used to recognize the shape of an object, such as a corner, plane, or edge. However, the conventional sequential driving technique involves a long measurement time. This problem can be resolved by pulse coding ultrasonic signals, which allows multi-sensors to be fired simultaneously and adjacent objects to be distinguished. Accordingly, the current presents a new simultaneous coded driving system for an ultrasonic sensor array for object recognition in autonomous mobile robots. The proposed system is designed and implemented using a DSP and FPGA. A micro-controller board is made using a DSP, Polaroid 6500 ranging modules are modified for firing the coded signals, and a 5-channel coded signal generating board is made using a FPGA. To verify the proposed method, experiments were conducted in an environment with overlapping signals, and the flight distances for each sensor were obtained from the received overlapping signals using correlations and conversion to a bipolar PCM-NRZ signal.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.78-87
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• 2012

In this paper, we address the tracking problem caused by camera motion and rolling shutter effects associated with CMOS sensors in consumer handheld cameras, such as mobile cameras, digital cameras, and digital camcorders. A modified particle filtering method is proposed for simultaneously tracking objects and compensating for the effects of camera motion. The proposed method uses an elastic registration algorithm (ER) that considers the global affine motion as well as the brightness and contrast between images, assuming that camera motion results in an affine transform of the image between two successive frames. By assuming that the camera motion is modeled globally by an affine transform, only the global affine model instead of the local model was considered. Only the brightness parameter was used in intensity variation. The contrast parameters used in the original ER algorithm were ignored because the change in illumination is small enough between temporally adjacent frames. The proposed particle filtering consists of the following four steps: (i) prediction step, (ii) compensating prediction state error based on camera motion estimation, (iii) update step and (iv) re-sampling step. A larger number of particles are needed when camera motion generates a prediction state error of an object at the prediction step. The proposed method robustly tracks the object of interest by compensating for the prediction state error using the affine motion model estimated from ER. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the conventional particle filter, and can track moving objects robustly in consumer handheld imaging devices.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1996.04a
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• pp.670-674
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• 1996

In automated search of a design database to support mechanical design, it is necessaryto recognize a shape pattern which represents a design object. This paper introduces the concept of a surface relation graph (SRG) for recognizing shape patterns from a 3D boundary representation scheme of a solid model(a B-rep model). In SRG, the nodes and arcs correspond to the faces and edges shared by two adjacent faces, respectively. An attribute assigned to an arc is given by an integer which discriminates the relationship between two adjacent faces. The + sign of the integer represents the geometric convexity of the solid, and the -sign the concivity at the shared edge. The input shape is recognized by comparison with the predefined features which are subgraphs of the SRG. A hierarchyof the database for upporting the design is presented. A search for the design database is also discussed. The usefulness of this method is illustrated by some application results.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.283-285
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• 2003

This paper describes a data fusion method for high spatial resolution satellite imagery. The pixels located around an object edge have spectral mixing because of the geometric primitive of pixel. The larger a size of pixel is, the wider an area of spectral mixing is. The intensity of pixels adjacent edges were modified by the spectral characteristics of the pixels located inside of objects. The methods developed in this study were tested using IKONOS Multispectral and Pan data of a part of Jeju-shi in Korea. The test application shows that the spectral information of the pixels adjacent edges were improved well.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.827-830
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• 2010

For an adaptive cruise control (ACC) stop-and-go system in automotive applications, three radar sensors are needed because two 24 GHz short range radars are used for object detection in an adjacent lane, and one 77 GHz long-range radar is used for object detection in the center lane. In this letter, we propose a single sensor-based 24 GHz radar with a detection capability of up to 150 m and ${\pm}30^{\circ}$ for an ACC stop-and-go system. The developed radar is highly integrated with a high gain patch antenna, four channel receivers with GaAs RF ICs, and back-end processing board with subspace based digital beam forming algorithm.