• Journal of Auto-vehicle Safety Association
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.20-26
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• 2024

The delivery using drones has been attracting attention because it can innovatively reduce the delivery time from the time of order to completion of delivery compared to the current delivery system, and there have been pilot projects conducted for safe drone delivery. However, the current drone delivery system has the disadvantage of limiting the operational efficiency offered by fully autonomous delivery drones in that drones mainly deliver goods to pre-set landing sites or delivery bases, and the final delivery is still made by humans. In this paper, to overcome these limitations, we propose obstacle detection and landing site selection algorithm based on a vision sensor that enables safe drone landing at the delivery location of the product orderer, and experimentally prove the possibility of station-to-door delivery. The proposed algorithm forms a 3D map of point cloud based on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technology and presents a grid segmentation technique, allowing drones to stably find a landing site even in places without prior information. We aims to verify the performance of the proposed algorithm through streaming data received from the drone.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.746-757
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• 2023

This study presents a novel safe landing algorithm for urban drone deliveries. The rapid advancement of drone technology has given rise to various delivery services for everyday necessities and emergency relief efforts. However, the reliability of drone delivery technology is still insufficient for application in urban environments. The proposed approach uses the "landing angle control" method to allow the drone to land vertically and a rapidly exploring random tree-based collision avoidance algorithm to generate safe and efficient vertical landing paths for drones while avoiding common urban obstacles like trees, street lights, utility poles, and wires; these methods allow for precise and reliable urban drone delivery. We verified the approach within a Gazebo simulation operated through ROS using a six-degree-of-freedom drone model and sensors with similar specifications to actual models. The performance of the algorithms was tested in various scenarios by comparing it with that of stateof-the-art 3D path planning algorithms.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.225-232
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• 2022

Recently, unmanned logistics delivery systems, such as UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, written as drone below) and autonomous robot delivery systems, have been implemented in many countries due to the rapid development of autonomous driving technology. The development of these new types of advanced unmanned logistics delivery systems is essential not only to become a leading logistics company but also to secure national competitiveness. In this paper, the application of the unmanned logistics delivery system was investigated in terms of market trends, overall technology level of last mile delivery drone and autonomous delivery robot. The direction of response to changes in the last mile delivery service market was checked through a comparison of the technological level between domestic companies that produce last mile devices and advanced foreign companies. As a result of this technology level analysis, the difference between domestic companies and advanced companies was shown using tables and figures to show their relative levels. The results of this analysis reflect the opinions of experts in the field of last-mile delivery technology. In addition, the technology level of unmanned logistics delivery systems for each country was analyzed based on the number of related technology patents. Lastly, insights for the technology level analysis of unmanned last mile delivery systems were proposed as a conclusion.

• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.11-19
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• 2023

Drones, which were early operated by remote control, have evolved to enable autonomous flight by combining various sensors and software tools. In particular, autonomous flight of drones was possible since the application of GNSS-RTK (global navigation satellite system with real-time kinematic positioning), a precision satellite navigation technology. For instance, unmanned drone delivery based on GNSS-RTK data was demonstrated for pizza delivery in Korea for the first time in 2021. However, the vulnerabilities of GNSS-RTK should be overcome for delivery drones to be commercialized. In particular, jamming in the navigation system and low positioning accuracy in urban areas should be addressed. Solving these two problems can lead to stable flight, takeoff, and landing of drones in urban areas, and the corresponding solutions are expected to establish a hybrid positioning technology. We discuss current trends in hybrid positioning technology that can either replace or complement GNSS-RTK for stable drone autonomous flight.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.160-167
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• 2023

This study focuses on the development of a Last-Mile delivery service using unmanned vehicles to deliver goods directly to the end consumer utilizing drones to perform autonomous delivery missions and an image-based precision landing algorithm for handoff to a robot in an intermediate facility. As the logistics market continues to grow rapidly, parcel volumes increase exponentially each year. However, due to low delivery fees, the workload of delivery personnel is increasing, resulting in a decrease in the quality of delivery services. To address this issue, the research team conducted a study on a Last-Mile delivery service using unmanned vehicles and conducted research on the necessary technologies for drone-based goods transportation in this paper. The flight scenario begins with the drone carrying the goods from a pickup location to the rooftop of a building where the final delivery destination is located. There is a handoff facility on the rooftop of the building, and a marker on the roof must be accurately landed upon. The mission is complete once the goods are delivered and the drone returns to its original location. The research team developed a mission planning algorithm to perform the above scenario automatically and constructed an algorithm to recognize the marker through a camera sensor and achieve a precision landing. The performance of the developed system has been verified through multiple trial operations within ETRI.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.25-39
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• 2016

The drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle which has no human pilot. Drones can be classified into military drones, commercial drones, and personal drones by usage. Also, drones can be classified from large-sized to nano-sized drone by size and autonomous, remote controlled drone by control type. Especially, military drones can be classified into low-altitude drones, medium-altitude, and high-altitude drones by altitude. Recently, the drone industry is one of the fast growing industries in the world. As drone technologies have become more advanced and cost-effective, Korean government has set its goal to become a top-level country in drone business. However, the government's strict regulation for drone operations is one of the biggest hurdles for the development of the related technologies in Korea and other countries. For example, critical problems for drone delivery can be classified into technical issues and institutional issues. Technical issues include durability, conditional awareness, grasp and release mechanisms, collision avoidance systems, drone operating system. Institutional issues include pilot and operator licensing, privacy rules, noise guidelines, security rules, education for drone police. This study analyzes the trends of the drone industry from the viewpoint of technology and regulation. Also, we define the business areas of drone utilization. Especially, the drone business types or models for public sector are proposed. Drone services or functions promoting public interests need to be aligned with the business reference model of Korean government. To define ten types of drone uses for public sector, we combine the business types of government with the future uses of drones that are proposed by futurists and business analysts. Future uses of drones can be divided into three sectors or services. First, drone services for public or military sectors include early warning systems, emergency services, news reporting, police drones, library drones, healthcare drones, travel drones. Second, drone services for commercial or industrial services include parcel delivery drones, gaming drones, sporting drones, farming and agriculture drones, ranching drones, robotic arm drones. Third, drone services for household sector include smart home drones.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.157-163
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• 2019

As the drone industry has grown greatly in recent years, drones are being used or developed in many industrial fields such as image shooting, pesticide application, delivery service, food delivery etc. In this paper, therefore, we developed a program that takes a user's desired area at a certain height using a camera-equipped drone and obtains the area of the zone the user wants through image processing. The first user selects an area or a path. Afterwards, the drone flies and takes pictures, and then measures the user's needs. A digital image taken at a constant height and with the same resolution is composed of pixels, the area can be calculated easily if we know the number of pixels in the zone the user wants. Particularly, it is easy to calculate the area of various shaped zones, not terrain shapes such as triangles and squares. In addition, the total area of specific places of the entire zone can be calculated. With the program of this paper, anyone can easily calculate the area of the place the user wants using a drone rather than calculating the area through difficult formulas or specialized equipment.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.375-383
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• 2021

Due to COVID-19, people are building new lifestyles such as online shopping, online travel, and video conferencing by limiting going out and gatherings. Such rapid social change is causing new problems and deepening existing problems at the same time. In particular, as online consumption increases significantly, traffic congestion, air pollution, and the heavy workload of delivery drivers are deepening in the daily logistics industry, and face-to-face delivery is emerging as a new problem. With the advent of the 4th industrial revolution, unmanned delivery using drones, artificial intelligence, and autonomous driving is emerging as an alternative to the existing logistics industry. However, space for logistics facilities and securing additional logistics sites due to drone flight are emerging as new problems to be solved. Therefore, it is intended to link additional services such as logistics movement, storage, and delivery by utilizing the existing transportation business, the subway, as a space for a logistics facility for drones that can solve existing problems and new problems.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2023.11a
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• pp.624-627
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• 2023

Unmanned aerial vehicles are gaining in popularity with the development of science and technology, and are being used for a wide range of purposes, including surveillance, rescue, delivery of goods, and data collection. In particular, the ability to avoid obstacles during navigation without human oversight is one of the essential capabilities that a drone must possess. Many works currently have solved this problem by implementing deep reinforcement learning (DRL) model. The essential core of a DRL model is reward function. Therefore, this paper proposes a new reward function with appropriate action space and employs dueling double deep Q-Networks to train a drone to navigate in indoor environment without collision.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.79-85
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• 2020

Recently, the RPAS(Remote Piloted Aircraft System), by remote control and autonomous navigation, has been increasing in interest and utilization in various industries and public organizations along with delivery drones, fire drones, ambulances, agricultural drones, and others. The problems of the stability of unmanned drones, which can be self-controlled, are also the biggest challenge to be solved along the development of the drone industry. drones should be able to fly in the specified path the autonomous flight control system sets, and perform automatically an accurate landing at the destination. This study proposes a technique to check arrival by landing point images and control landing at the correct point, compensating for errors in location data of the drone sensors and GPS. Receiving from the Google Map API and learning from the destination video, taking images of the landing point with a drone equipped with a NAVIO2 and Raspberry Pi, camera, sending them to the server, adjusting the location of the drone in line with threshold, Drones can automatically land at the landing point.