• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.363-375
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• 2013

Today, a shortage of the skilled operator has been intensified gradually and the necessity of an earthwork in extreme environment operators are difficult to access is increasing for the purpose of resource development and new living space creation. For this reason, an effort to develop an unmanned excavation robot for fully automated earthwork system is continuing globally. In Korea, a research consortium called 'Intelligent Excavation System' has been formed since 2006 as a part of Construction Technology Innovation Program of Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs of Korea. Among detailed technologies of the Task Planning System is one of the core technologies of IES, this paper explains research and development process of the Local Area Design Module, which provides informatization unit to create automated excavators' work command information at operation level such as location, range, target, and sequence for excavation work. Designing of Local Area should be considered various influential factors such as excavator's specification, working mechanism, heuristics, and structural stability to create work plan guaranteed safety and effectiveness. For this research, conceptual and detail design of the Local Area is performed for analyzing design element and variable, and quantization method of design specification corresponding with heuristics and structural safety is generated. Finally, module is developed through constructed algorithm and developed module is verified.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.1 no.1 s.1
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• pp.87-94
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• 2000

Crack sealing, a routine and necessary part of pavement maintenance, is a dangerous, costly, and labor-intensive operation. Within the North America, about ${\$}200$ million is spent annually on crack sealing, with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) spending about ${\$}7$ million annually (labor alone accounts for over 50 percent of these costs). Prompted by concerns of safety and cost, the University of Texas at Austin, in cooperation with TxDOT and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has developed a unique computer-guided Automated Road Maintenance Machine (ARMM) for pavement crack sealing. In 1999, successful field tests have been undertaken in 8 States around the U.S. This paper first describes significance of the automated crack sealing and technical advances in automated crack sealers including the ARMM, developed in the U.S. It then discusses the ARMM's field implementation and performance evaluation results, and improvements and modifications suggested through the technology evaluation during the field trials. Current research efforts and future work plans in its further development are also presented in this paper.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.437-446
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• 2006

Laser vision inspection systems are becoming popular for automated inspection of manufactured components. The performance of such systems can be enhanced by improving accuracy of the hardware and robustness of the software used in the system. This paper presents a new approach for enhancing the capability of a laser vision system by applying hardware compensation and using efficient analysis software. A 3D geometrical model is developed to study and compensate for possible distortions in installation of gantry robot on which the vision system is mounted. Appropriate compensation is applied to the inspection data obtained from the laser vision system based on the parameters in 3D model. The present laser vision system is used for dimensional inspection of car chassis sub frame and lower arm assembly module. An algorithm based on simplex search techniques is used for analyzing the compensated inspection data. The details of 3D model, parameters used for compensation and the measurement data obtained from the system are presented in this paper. The details of search algorithm used for analyzing the measurement data and the results obtained are also presented in the paper. It is observed from the results that, by applying compensation and using appropriate algorithms for analyzing, the error in evaluation of the inspection data can be significantly minimized, thus reducing the risk of rejecting good parts.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.237-240
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• 2003

Gas turbines are extensively used in flight propulsion, electrical power generation, and other industrial applications. During its life span, a turbine blade is taken out periodically for repair and maintenance. This includes re-coating the blade surface and re-drilling the cooling holes/channels. A successful laser re-drilling requires the measurement of a hole within the accuracy of ${\pm}0.15mm$ in position and ${\pm}3^{\circ}$ in orientation. Detection of gas turbine blade/vane cooling hole position and orientation thus becomes a very important step for the vane/blade repair process. The industry is in urgent need of an automated system to fulfill the above task. This paper proposes approaches and algorithms to detect the cooling hole position and orientation by using a vision system mounted on a robot arm. The channel orientation is determined based on the alignment of the vision system with the channel axis. The opening position of the channel is the intersection between the channel axis and the surface around the channel opening. Experimental results have indicated that the concept of cooling hole identification is feasible. It has been shown that the reproducible detection of cooling channel position is with +/- 0.15mm accuracy and cooling channel orientation is with +/$-\;3^{\circ}$ with the current test conditions. Average processing time to search and identify channel position and orientation is less than 1 minute.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.25 no.9
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• pp.1-7
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• 2011

A performance delivers the contents and feeling through human bodies and stage settings in the limited space of a stage. Among the stage settings, the lighting creates overall atmospheres effectively according to the situations of the performance such as a time flow, a change of seasons, an expression of the mental state of the performer. As the LED lighting is used more widely, the number and the size of the lighting is being decreased, which makes it possible for various devices to be used. However, just as conventional lighting devices, most of them are fixed. So it is difficult to use them at a blind spot and to replace them. To solve this problem, this article suggests a system which replaces lighting automatically and moves. As it can moved to a spot we want on a rail, and the lighting system can be replaced by itself, it can have various lighting effects, increasing the effectiveness of the performance. Additionally, it can also decrease the danger of a worker operating the lighting device located at a high place. At the mock-up experiment, its mobility and stability on a rail were tested using the wheel of the Modular Robot.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.2 s.95
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• pp.39-49
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• 1999

This paper describes the development of a vision-aided position and orientation recognition system for automatically adjusting electronic tuners which control the waveform by rotating variable resisters. The position and orientation recognition system estimates the center and the angle of the tuner grooves so that the main controller may correct the difference from the ideal position and thereby manipulate the variable resisters automatically. In this paper a robust algorithm is suggested which estimates the center and the angle of the tuner grooves fast and precisly from the source image with lighting variance and video noise. In the algorithm morphological filtering, 8-chain coding, and invariant moments are sequentially used to figure out image segments concerned. The performance of the proposed system was evaluated using a set of real specimens. The results indicate the system works well enough to be used practically in real manufacturing lines. If the system adopts a high speed frame grabber which enables real time image processing, it can also be applied to positioning of robot manipulators as well as automated PCB adjusters.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.807-813
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• 2011

High precision of planning in the preoperative phase can contribute to increase operational safety during computer-aided spinal fusion surgery, which requires extreme caution on the part of the surgeon, due to the complexity and delicacy of the procedure. In this paper, an advanced preoperative planning framework for spinal fusion is presented. The framework is based on spinal pedicle data obtained from CT (Computed Tomography) images, and provides optimal insertion trajectories and pedicle screw sizes. The proposed approach begins with safety margin estimation for each potential insertion trajectory that passes through the pedicle volume, followed by procedures to collect a set of insertion trajectories that satisfy operation safety objectives. The radius of a pedicle screw was chosen as 70% of the pedicle radius. This framework has been tested on 68 spinal pedicles of 8 patients requiring spinal fusion. It was successfully applied, resulting in an average success rate of 100% and a final safety margin of $2.44{\pm}0.51mm$.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.326-333
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• 2001

This paper focuses on a method to connect mobile devices such as mobile robot. Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) and Unmanned Container Transporter(UCT) to a fieldbus. In this paper, the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN is used to extend a Profibus network for the mobile devices. In order to integrate these two networks, a gateway is developed using two threads and an internal buffer. Furthermore, a polling algorithm is applied at the gateway in order to satisfy real-time requirements on data communication, Finally, the performance measures such as data latency and throughput are experimentally evaluated on a wirelessly-extended Profibus network. The results shows the feasibility of the wireless extension of Profilbus for various mobile device.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.631-632
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• 2006

The assembly of camera lens modules fur the mobile phone has not been automated so far. They are still assembled manually because of high precision of all parts and hard-to-recognize lens by vision camera. In addition, the very short life cycle of the camera phone lens requires flexible and intelligent automation. This study proposes a fast and accurate identification system of the parts by distributing the camera for 4 degree of freedom assembly robot system. Single or multi-cameras can be installed according to the part's image capture and processing mode. It has an agile structure which enables adaptation with the minimal job change. The framework is proposed and the experimental result is shown to prove the effectiveness.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.163-169
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• 2008

The application of robot technology on construction sites is recognized an effective solution to the problems caused by labor shortage on the construction industry, and relevant studies are being carried out increasingly. Automatic construction system for frames of high-rise building was developed in Japan in 1990's. Practical use o F the system, however, was failed due to inefficiency Now, we are developing economic and practical automatic construction system that is lighter and suitable for building construction In Korea. This study has discussed developing the system of construction factory and climbing control system, which is the core technology of the automatic construction system in Korea.