• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.529-536
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• 2004

Autonomous navigation of an indoor mobile robot using the global ultrasonic system is presented in this paper. Since the trajectory error of the dead-reckoning navigation grows with time and distance, the autonomous navigation of a mobile robot requires to localize the current position of the robot, so that to compensate the trajectory error. The global ultrasonic system consisting of four ultrasonic generators fixed at a priori known positions in the work space and two receivers on the mobile robot has the similar structure with the well-known satellite GPS(Global Positioning System), and it is useful for the self-localization of an indoor mobile robot. The EKF(Extended Kalman Filter) algorithm for the self-localization is proposed and the autonomous navigation based on the self-localization is verified by experiments.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.63 no.1
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• pp.108-114
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• 2014

This paper proposes a generation method of a navigation guidance direction and a fuzzy controller to achieve the autonomous navigation of a mobile robot using a particle swarm optimization(PSO) scheme in unknown environments. The proposed navigation guidance direction is the direction that leads a mobile robot to arrive a target point simultaneously with avoiding obstacles efficiently according to the surrounding local informations. It is generated by selecting the most suitable direction of the many directions in the surrounding environment using a particle swarm optimization scheme. Also, a robot can reach a target point with avoiding the various obstacles by controlling the robot so that it can move from its current orientation to the navigation guidance direction using the proposed fuzzy controller. Simulation results are presented to show the feasibility and validity of the proposed robot navigation scheme.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.51 no.9
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• pp.402-412
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• 2002

The navigation algorithms enable autonomous mobile robots to reach given target points without collision against obstacles. To achieve safe navigations in unknown environments, this paper presents an effective navigation algorithm for the autonomous mobile robots with ultrasonic sensors. The proposed navigation algorithm consists of an obstacle-avoidance behavior, a target-reaching behavior and a fuzzy-based decision maker. In the obstacle-avoidance behavior and the target-reaching behavior, artificial immune networks are used to select a proper steering angle, make the autonomous mobile robot avoid obstacles and approach a given target point. The fuzzy-based decision maker combines the steering angles from the target-reaching behavior and the obstacle-avoidance behavior in order to steer the autonomous mobile robot appropriately. Simulational and experimental results show that the proposed navigation algorithm is very effective in unknown environments.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.246-257
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• 2010

Autonomous guided robot navigation which consists of following unknown paths and avoiding unknown obstacles has been a fundamental technique for unmanned robots in outdoor environments. The unknown path following requires techniques such as path recognition, path planning, and robot pose estimation. In this paper, we propose a novel sensor fusion system for autonomous guided robot navigation in outdoor environments. The proposed system consists of three monocular cameras and an array of nine infrared range sensors. The two cameras equipped on the robot's right and left sides are used to recognize unknown paths and estimate relative robot pose on these paths through bayesian sensor fusion method, and the other camera equipped at the front of the robot is used to recognize abrupt curves and unknown obstacles. The infrared range sensor array is used to improve the robustness of obstacle avoidance. The forward camera and the infrared range sensor array are fused through rule-based method for obstacle avoidance. Experiments in outdoor environments show the mobile robot with the proposed sensor fusion system performed successfully real-time autonomous guided navigation.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.148-156
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• 2011

This paper presents an implementation of autonomous navigation of a mobile robot indoors. It explains methods for map building, localization, obstacle avoidance and path planning. Geometric map is used for localization and path planning. The localization method calculates sensor data based on the map for comparison with the real sensor data. Monte Carlo Localization(MCL) method is adopted for estimation of the robot position. For obstacle avoidance, an artificial potential field generates repulsive and attractive force to the robot. Dijkstra algorithm plans the shortest distance path from a start position to a goal point. The methods integrate into autonomous navigation method and implemented for indoor navigation. The experiments show that the proposed method works well for safe autonomous navigation.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.2024-2029
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• 2005

In this paper, it is shown how a mobile robot can navigate with high speed in dynamic real environment. In order to achieve high speed and safe navigation, a robot collects environmental information. A robot empirically memorizes locations of high risk due to the abrupt appearance of dynamic obstacles. After collecting sufficient data, a robot navigates in high speed in safe regions. This fact implies that the robot accumulates location dependent environmental information and the robot exploits its experiences in order to improve its navigation performance. This paper proposes a computational scheme how a robot can distinguish regions of high risk. Then, we focus on velocity control in order to achieve high speed navigation. The proposed scheme is experimentally tested in real office building. The experimental results clearly show that the proposed scheme is useful for improving a performance of autonomous navigation. Although the scope of this paper is limited to the velocity control in order to deal with unexpected obstacles, this paper points out a new direction towards the intelligent behavior control of autonomous robots based on the robot's experience.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.293-299
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• 2009

This paper discusses an autonomous navigation system for urban environments. For the localization of the robot, EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) algorithm is used with odometry, angle sensor, and DGPS (Differential Global Positioning System) measurement. Especially in an urban environment, DGPS is often blocked by buildings and trees and the resulting inaccurate positioning prevents the robot from safe and reliable navigation. In addition to the global information from DGPS, the local information of the curb on the roadway is used to track a route when the global DGPS information is inaccurate. For this purpose, curb detection algorithm is developed and implemented in the developed navigation algorithm. Four different types of navigation strategies are developed and they are switched to adapt to different localization conditions according to the availability of DGPS and the existence of the curbs on the roadway. The experimental results show that the designed switching strategy improves the navigation performance adapting to the environment conditions.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.245-254
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• 2008

Recently, many vision-based navigation methods have been introduced as an intelligent robot application. However, many of these methods mainly focus on finding an image in the database corresponding to a query image. Thus, if the environment changes, for example, objects moving in the environment, a robot is unlikely to find consistent corresponding points with one of the database images. To solve these problems, we propose a novel navigation strategy which uses fast motion estimation and a practical scene recognition scheme preparing the kidnapping problem, which is defined as the problem of re-localizing a mobile robot after it is undergone an unknown motion or visual occlusion. This algorithm is based on motion estimation by a camera to plan the next movement of a robot and an efficient outlier rejection algorithm for scene recognition. Experimental results demonstrate the capability of the vision-based autonomous navigation against dynamic environments.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.210-217
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• 2010

This paper presents integrated path planning and collision avoidance for an omni-directional mobile robot. In this scheme, the autonomous mobile robot finds the shortest path by the descendent gradient of a navigation function to reach a goal. In doing so, the robot based on the proposed approach attempts to overcome some of the typical problems that may pose to the conventional robot navigation. In particular, this paper presents a set of analysis for an omni-directional mobile robot to avoid trapped situations for two representative scenarios: 1) Ushaped deep narrow obstacle and 2) narrow passage problem between two obstacles. The proposed navigation scheme eliminates the nonfeasible area for the two cases by the help of the descendent gradient of the navigation function and the characteristics of an omni-directional mobile robot. The simulation results show that the proposed navigation scheme can effectively construct a path-planning system in the capability of reaching a goal and avoiding obstacles despite possible trapped situations under uncertain world knowledge.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.249-255
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• 2007

Under the situation of a fire, it is difficult for a rescue robot to use sensors such as vision sensor, ultrasonic sensor or laser distance sensor because of diffusion, refraction or block of light and sound by dense smoke. But, braille blocks that are installed for the visaully impaired at public places such as subway stations can be used as a map for autonomous mobile robot's localization and navigation. In this paper, we developed a laser sensor stan device which can detect braille blcoks in spite of dense smoke and integrated the device to the robot developed to carry out rescue mission in various hazardous disaster areas at KIST. We implemented MCL algorithm for robot's attitude estimation according to the scanned data and transformed a braille block map to a topological map and designed a nonlinear path tracking controller for autonomous navigation. From various simulations and experiments, we could verify that the developed laser sensor device and the proposed localization method are effective to autonomous tracking of braille blocks and the autonomous navigation robot system can be used for rescue under fire.