• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.337-339
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• 2007

This paper proposes a new paradigm for cooperation of multi-robot system for home service. For localization of each robot. the master robot collects information of location of each robot based on communication of RFID tag on the floor and RFID reader attached on the bottom of the robot. The Master robot communicates with slave robots via wireless LAN to check the motion of robots and command to them based on the information from slave robots. The operator may send command to slave robots based on the HRI(Human-Robot Interaction) screened on masted robot using information from slave robots. The cooperation of multiple robots will enhance the performance comparing with single robot.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.573-579
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• 2006

Most of the recently developed robots are human friendly robots which imitate an animal or human such as entertainment robot, biomimetic robot and humanoid robot. Interest in these robots is increased because the social trend is focused on health, welfare, and graying. By these social backgrounds, robots become more human friendly and suitable or home or personal environment. The more biomimetic robots resemble living creature, the more human feels familiarity. Human feels close friendship not only when feeding a pet, but also when watching a pet having the food. Most of entertainment robots and pet robots use internal-type batteries and have a self-recharging function. Entertainment robots and pet robots with internal-type batteries are not able to operate during charging the battery. So far there have been a few robots that do not depend on an internal battery. However, they need a bulky energy conversion unit and a slug or foods as an energy source, which is not suitable for home or personal application. In this paper, we introduce a new biomimetic entertainment robot with autonomous eating functionality, called EPRO-1(Eating Pet RObot version 1). The EPRO-1 is able to eat a food (a small battery), by itself and evacuate. We describe the design concept of the autonomous eating mechanism of the EPRO-1, characteristics of sub-parts of the manufactured mechanism and its control system.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.334-340
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• 2007

This paper introduces a prototype smart home environment that is built in the research building to demonstrate the feasibility of a robot-assisted future home environment. Localization, navigation, object recognition and handling are core functionalities that an intelligent service robot should provide. A huge amount of research effort has been made to make the service robot perform these functions with its own sensors, actuators and a knowledge base. With all complicated configuration of sensors, actuators and a database, the robot could only perform the given tasks in a predefined environment or show the limited capabilities in a natural environment. We started a smart home environment for service robots for simple service robots to provide reliable services by communicating with the environment through the wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we introduce various types of smart devices that are developed for assisting the robot in the environment by providing sensor and actuator capabilities. In addition, we present how the devices are integrated to constitute the smart home environment for service robots.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.159-168
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• 2008

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), based on already well-researched Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), has been under vigorous scrutiny since recent developments in robot technology. Robots may be more successful in establishing common ground in project-based education or foreign language learning for children than in traditional media. Backed by its strong IT environment and advances in robot technology, Korea has developed the world's first available e-Learning home robot. This has demonstrated the potential for robots to be used as a new educational media - robot-learning, referred to as 'r-Learning'. Robot technology is expected to become more interactive and user-friendly than computers. Also, robots can exhibit various forms of communication such as gestures, motions and facial expressions. This study compared the effects of non-computer based (NCB) media (using a book with audiotape) and Web-Based Instruction (WBI), with the effects of Home Robot-Assisted Learning (HRL) for children. The robot gestured and spoke in English, and children could touch its monitor if it did not recognize their voice command. Compared to other learning programs, the HRL was superior in promoting and improving children's concentration, interest, and academic achievement. In addition, the children felt that a home robot was friendlier than other types of instructional media. The HRL group had longer concentration spans than the other groups, and the p-value demonstrated a significant difference in concentration among the groups. In regard to the children's interest in learning, the HRL group showed the highest level of interest, the NCB group and the WBI group came next in order. Also, academic achievement was the highest in the HRL group, followed by the WBI group and the NCB group respectively. However, a significant difference was also found in the children's academic achievement among the groups. These results suggest that home robots are more effective as regards children's learning concentration, learning interest and academic achievement than other types of instructional media (such as: books with audiotape and WBI) for English as a foreign language.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.471-472
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• 2017

There are 3,931,822 elderly who receives long-term care at home and 1,704,469 elderly who stay at long-term care facilities in those of 34,610,000 of +65 years old population in Japan; thus, the elderly people who need home care are 2.3 times more than facilities (2016).In the near future, the number of elderly people with a degree of daily life independence and dementia category II or more will increase to 4.7 million (12.8% of the elderly population). Therefore, the use of home-care robots is essential for the disaster evacuation of the overwhelming majority of those elderly who need home care and for of vitals checks to keep family, caregivers, and medical professionals informed to reduce the risk in chronic health conditions in welfare evacuation centers. This also helps to care for the caregivers who are caring for the elderly, and the introduction of home-robots to evacuation centers should receive prompt attention from our care-friendly society.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.1525-1529
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• 2004

Most of the recently developed robots are human friendly robots which imitate an animal or human such as entertainment robot, bio-mimetic robot and humanoid robot. Interest in these robots are increasing since the social trend is focused on health, welfare, and graying. By these social backgrounds, robots become more human friendly and suitable for home or personal environment. The more bio-mimetic robots resemble living creature, the more human feels familiarity. People feel close friendship not only when they feed a pet, but also when they watch a pet having the food. Most of entertainment robots and pet robots use internal-type batteries and have a self-recharging function. Entertainment robots and pet robots with internal-type batteries are not able to operate during charging the battery. So far there have been a few robots that do not depend on a battery. However, they need a bulky energy conversion unit and a slug or foods as an energy source, which is not suitable for home or personal application. In this paper, we introduce a new bio-mimetic entertainment robot with autonomous feeding functionality, called ELIRO-1(Eating LIzard RObot version 1). The ELIRO-1 is able to find a food (a small battery), feed by itself and evacuate. We describe the design concept of the autonomous feeding mechanism of the ELIRO-1, characteristics of sub-parts of the manufactured mechanism and the control system.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.2042-2047
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• 2005

Many service robots which is interacting with human at home and in buildings have been developed. Few of them are shown in of the United States and of Japan. These robots are supposed to have a powerful indoor navigation performance in places where human beings live and work. The overall capability of service robots to move around in this environment is called environment correspondence, in which localization problem to find the accurate position and orientation is the most critical problem. While users set up a proper or a best environment for industrial robots, but for services robots at home and in buildings, it is very difficult to change the environment for robots. The expanded workspace due to mobility is difficult to be covered by means of those used for industrial robots because the cost increases and human beings do not want their environment to be changed for robots. This fact has made many researchers study efficient and effective environment correspondence problems. Among these problems, localization is the most difficult. Goal of localization study includes (1) Accurate detection of position and orientation (2) Minimum cost of the additional devices (3) Minimum change of human environment. In this study, as a solution of the above, we propose "Artificial Stars" which are attached on room ceiling as landmarks. In addition, we solve an adoption problem raised when a robot is delivered to a customer site and before it can perform its full navigation capability. We call this as "Initialization Problem" of service robots. We solve the initialization problem for both cases of environment with the map and without map. The proposed system is experimented and has shown how well it handles the initialization problem.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.446-451
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• 2013

As IT technology advances, the need for robots in various areas has been recognized. Robots that focused on the industrial market have been extended to household robots in everyday life. In fact, cleaning robots and security robots have been developed and sold. Most home robots, in spite of high price, their functions are limited. In this paper, we propose the intelligent home robot which is based on smartphones and moving devices to provide various services and voice control.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.07d
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• pp.2465-2467
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• 2004

In this paper we present the guideline to evaluate the easiness of using personal robots and their learning abilities based on the analysis of their built-in commands, user interfaces, and intelligences. Recently, we are breathing with robots that can be able to do lots of roles. cleaning, security, pets and education in real life. They can be classified as home robots, guide robots, service robots, robot pets, and so on. There are, however, no standards to evaluate their ability, so it is not easy to select an appropriate robot when a user wants to buy it. Thus, we present, as a guideline that can be a standard for the evaluation of the personal robots, the standards by means of analyzing existing personal robots and results of the recent research works. We will, also, describe how to apply the evaluation method th the personal robot.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.2696-2700
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• 2003

Nuclear robots should be developed for the reduction of radiation exposure, lower man hours, shorter power outage, and also improved worker safety concerns in performing hazardous and dangerous tasks. Among the components of a nuclear robot system, a robot control system equivalent to a human brain is a crucial point because a nuclear robot does not work without a control system. Therefore, in this paper, we will explain the requirements for a robot control system for a nuclear robot from a general point of view and also review the robot control systems of nuclear robots that were developed domestically, to assist a researcher beginning with the design for the control system of nuclear robots. The explained robot control system will be useful to develop the control system for industrial robots, home robots and other robots which are needed for tele-operation and are controlled through the internet.