• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.112-119
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• 2014

In this paper, the authors consider a gimbal system in which a camera is installed to reconnoiter the objects or targets. The issue for this considered system is to obtain information with good quality always. To achieve given objective, it is necessary to control the gimbal system with accurate rotation angle and speed. In this paper, the authors design a robust control system based on $H_{\infty}$ control framework. The controller is designed using a plant model obtained by experiment and simulation. And the experiment result with good control performance is presented.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.680-687
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• 2012

One of the frequent problems in the stabilized gimbal system is the rejection of disturbances associated with moving components. Very often such disturbances have non-linear characteristics. In a typical gimbal system, each gimbal and platform are connected by a mutual bearing which induces inevitable friction. Particularly, the non-linear Coulomb friction causes position errors as well as slow responses that lead to unfavorable performance. In this paper, a modified PID controller that is augmented by Coulomb friction estimator is presented. Through constantly estimating the Coulomb friction torque, it is applied to the output of the existing PID controller. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is evaluated through a series of experiments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.341-342
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• 2013

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.262-269
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• 2016

Flight of an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) generally consists of four steps; take-off, ascent, descent, and finally landing. Among them, autonomous landing is a challenging task due to high risks and reliability problem. In case the landing site where the UAV is supposed to land is moving or oscillating, the situation becomes more unpredictable and it is far more difficult than landing on a stationary site. For these reasons, the accurate and precise control is required for an autonomous landing system of a UAV on top of a moving vehicle which is rolling or oscillating while moving. In this paper, a vision-only based landing algorithm using dynamic gimbal control is proposed. The conventional camera systems which are applied to the previous studies are fixed as downward facing or forward facing. The main disadvantage of these system is a narrow field of view (FOV). By controlling the gimbal to track the target dynamically, this problem can be ameliorated. Furthermore, the system helps the UAV follow the target faster than using only a fixed camera. With the artificial tag on a landing pad, the relative position and orientation of the UAV are acquired, and those estimated poses are used for gimbal control and UAV control for safe and stable landing on a moving vehicle. The outdoor experimental results show that this vision-based algorithm performs fairly well and can be applied to real situations.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.291-305
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• 2003

The cost of deploying Geological and Environmental information gathering systems, especially when such systems obtain remote sensing and photographic data through the use of commercial satellites and aircraft. Besides the high cost equipment required, adverse weather conditions can further restrict a researcher's ability to collect data anywhere and anytime. To mitigate this problem, we have developed a compact, multi-spectral automatic Aerial photographic system. This system's Multi-spectral camera is capable of the visible (RGB) and infrared (NIR) bands (3032*2008 pixel). It consists of a thermal infrared camera and automatic balance control, and can be managed by a palm-top computer. Other features includes a camera gimbal system, GPS receiver, weather sensor among others. We have evaluated the efficiency of this system in several field tests at the following locations: Kyongsang-bukdo beach, Nakdong river (at each site of mulkeum-namji and koryung-gumi), and Kyungahn River. Its tested ability in aerial photography, weather data, as well as GPS data acquisition demonstrates its flexibility as a tool for environmental data monitoring.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.646-652
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• 2013

PRA(Position Reporting Accuracy) for EO/IR(Electro-Optic/Infrared) airborne camera is an important factor in geo-pointing accuracy. Generally, rate table is used to measure PRA of gimbal actuated camera like EO/IR. However, it is not always possible to fix an EUT(Equipment for Under Test) to rate table due to capacity limit of the table on the size and weight of the object(EUT). Our EO/IR is too big and heavy to emplace on it. Therefore, we propose a new verification method of PRA for airborne camera and assess the validity of our proposition. In this method we use collimator, angle measuring instrument, 6 dof motion simulator, optical surface plate, leveling laser, inclinometer and poster(for alignment).

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.64 no.7
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• pp.1056-1063
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• 2015

In this paper, we develop an interface for aerial photograph platform which consists of a quadrotor and a gimbal using the human body and the head posture. As quadrotors have been widely adopted in many industries such as aerial photography, remote surveillance, and maintenance of infrastructures, the demand of aerial video and photograph has been increasing remarkably. Stick type remote controllers are widely used to control a quadrotor, but this method is not an intuitive way of controlling the aerial vehicle and the camera simultaneously. Therefore, a new interface which controls the serial photograph platform is presented. The presented interface uses the human head movement measured by head-mounted display as a reference for controlling the camera angle, and the human body posture measured from Kinect for controlling the attitude of the quadrotor. As the image captured by the camera is displayed on the head-mounted display simultaneously, the user can feel flying experience and intuitively control the quadrotor and the camera. Finally, the performance of the developed system shown to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the presented interface.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.174-181
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• 2011

An airborne sensor is developed for remote sensing on an aerial vehicle (UV). The sensor is an optical payload for an eletro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) dual band camera that combines visible and IR imaging capabilities in a compact and lightweight package. It adopts a Ritchey-Chr$\'{e}$tien telescope for the common front end optics with several relay optics that divide and deliver EO and IR bands to a charge-coupled-device (CCD) and an IR detector, respectively. The EO/IR camera for dual bands is mounted on a two-axis gimbal that provides stabilized imaging and precision pointing in both the along and cross-track directions. We first investigate the mechanical deformations, displacements and stress of the EO/IR camera through finite element analysis (FEA) for five cases: three gravitational effects and two thermal conditions. For investigating gravitational effects, one gravitational acceleration (1 g) is given along each of the +x, +y and +z directions. The two thermal conditions are the overall temperature change to $30^{\circ}C$ from $20^{\circ}C$ and the temperature gradient across the primary mirror pupil from $-5^{\circ}C$ to $+5^{\circ}C$. Optical performance, represented by the modulation transfer function (MTF), is then predicted by integrating the FEA results into optics design/analysis software. This analysis shows the IR channel can sustain imaging performance as good as designed, i.e., MTF 38% at 13 line-pairs-per-mm (lpm), with refocus capability. Similarly, the EO channel can keep the designed performance (MTF 73% at 27.3 lpm) except in the case of the overall temperature change, in which the EO channel experiences slight performance degradation (MTF 16% drop) for $20^{\circ}C$ overall temperate change.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.307-314
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• 2011

This study proposed detection method of Marine debris using unmanned aerial photography. For unmanned aerial photography, a RC(Radio Control) helicopter which has good movability and economics was used. To a camera mounting, a gimbal equipment was attached to the bottom of the RC helicopter. The gimbal equipment is very useful because it is not seriously affected by vibration and rolling. In addition, we invented that digital image processing algorithm using Matlab program for detection of marine debris from photographs. Particularly, background subtraction in invented algorithm was applied. As a result, marine debris of a variety of forms from different sand states of coast were reliably detected. In the future, monitoring using proposed method was expected to contribute that the solution to representative problem of monitoring area selecting and estimate the total litter mass over the beach. Moreover, It is considered a greater application possibility to marine environmental observations.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.17-24
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• 2020

This study examined the spectral information and reflectance of cracks of an embankment with drone-based hyperspectral imagery for crack detection. A Nano-Hyperspec mounted on a drone was used as a sensor, and hyperspectral videos of different intensities of illumination of the cracks on the embankment located in the downstream of Andong-Dam were obtained. An analysis of the data value of the illumination and peak data-value, the coefficients of determination were calculated to be 0.9864 of the uncracked areas and 0.9851 of the cracked area. The reflectance of each area showed a similar value and pattern, regardless of the intensity of illumination. This result may have occurred because the reference values of the white reference as the calculation criteria of reflectance varied according to the intensity of illumination. The reflectance at the cracked area was 5.65% lower in visible light and 4.58% lower in near-infrared light than that at the uncracked area. The detection of cracks may offer more precise results in further studies when the gimbal direction and camera angles of the drone are calibrated. Because hyperspectral imagery enables the detection of crack depths and types of clay minerals, which are difficult to identify in general RGB imagery, it can serve as a preemptive measure for evaluating the embankment stability.