• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.1983-1989
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• 2005

Industrial robots are powerful, extremely accurate multi-jointed systems, but they are heavy and highly rigid because of their mechanical structure and motorization. Therefore, sharing the robot working space with its environment is problematic. A novel pneumatic artificial muscle actuator (PAM actuator) has been regarded during the recent decades as an interesting alternative to hydraulic and electric actuators. Its main advantages are high strength and high power/weight ratio, low cost, compactness, ease of maintenance, cleanliness, readily available and cheap power source, inherent safety and mobility assistance to humans performing tasks. The PAM is undoubtedly the most promising artificial muscle for the actuation of new types of industrial robots such as Rubber Actuator and PAM manipulators. However, some limitations still exist, such as the air compressibility and the lack of damping ability of the actuator bring the dynamic delay of the pressure response and cause the oscillatory motion. In addition, the nonlinearities in the PAM manipulator still limit the controllability. Therefore, it is not easy to realize motion with high accuracy and high speed and with respect to various external inertia loads in order to realize a human-friendly therapy robot To overcome these problems a novel controller, which harmonizes a phase plane switching control method with conventional PID controller and the adaptabilities of neural network, is newly proposed. In order to realize satisfactory control performance a variable damper - Magneto-Rheological Brake (MRB) is equipped to the joint of the manipulator. Superb mixture of conventional PID controller and a phase plane switching control using neural network brings us a novel controller. This proposed controller is appropriate for a kind of plants with nonlinearity uncertainties and disturbances. The experiments were carried out in practical PAM manipulator and the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm was demonstrated through experiments, which had proved that the stability of the manipulator can be improved greatly in a high gain control by using MRB with phase plane switching control using neural network and without regard for the changes of external inertia loads.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.365-378
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• 2011

Piezo-based active structural health monitoring (SHM) requires amplifiers specifically designed for capacitive loads. Moreover, with the increase in number of applications of wireless SHM systems, energy efficiency and cost reduction for this type of amplifiers is becoming a requirement. General lab grade amplifiers are big and costly, and not built for outdoor environments. Although some piezoceramic power amplifiers are available in the market, none of them are specifically targeting the wireless constraints and low power requirements. In this paper, a piezoceramic transducer amplifier for wireless active SHM systems has been designed. Power requirements are met by two digital On/Off switches that set the amplifier in a standby state when not in use. It provides a stable ${\pm}180$ Volts output with a bandwidth of 7k Hz using a single 12 V battery. Additionally, both voltage and current outputs are provided for feedback control, impedance check, or actuator damage verification. Vibration control tests of an aluminum beam were conducted in the University of Houston lab, while wireless active SHM tests of a wind turbine blade were performed in the Harbin Institute of Technology wind tunnel. The results showed that the developed amplifier provided equivalent results to commercial solutions in suppressing structural vibrations, and that it allows researchers to perform active wireless SHM on moving objects with no power wires from the grid.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.103-108
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• 2005

Loading/Unloading task in the real industry is performed by crane, but most of the loading/unloading task with the weight of 5kg∼30kg is done by human workers and this kind of work causes industrial disaster of workers. Therefore it is necessary to develop low cost loading/unloading manipulator system to prevent this kind of industrial accidents. This paper is concerned with the design and fabrication of 2 axis pneumatic manipulators using on/off solenoid valves and accurate position control without respect to the external load and low damping in the pneumatic rotary actuator. To overcome the change of external load, switching of control parameter using LVQNN (Learning Vector Quantization Neural Network) is newly applied, which estimates the external loads in the pneumatic cylinder. As an underlying controller, a state feedback controller using position, velocity and acceleration is applied to the switching control system. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms are demonstrated through experiments of pneumatic cylinder with various loads.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.572-575
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• 2005

A novel pneumatic artificial muscle actuator (PAM actuator), which has achieved increased popularity to provide the advantages such as high strength and high power/weight ratio, low cost, compactness, ease of maintenance, cleanliness, readily available and cheap power source, inherent safety and mobility assistance to humans performing tasks, has been regarded during the recent decades as an interesting alternative to hydraulic and electric actuators. In order to realize satisfactory control performance, a variable damper Magneto Rheological Brake (MRB), Is equipped to the Joint of the manipulator. Superb mixture of conventional PID controller and a phase plane switching control method brings us a novel controller. This proposed controller is appropriate for a kind of plants with nonlinearity, uncertainties and disturbances. The experiments were carried out in practical PAM manipulator and the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm was demonstrated through experiments, which had proved that the stability of the manipulator can be improved greatly in a high gain control by using MRB with phase plane switching control method and without regard for the changes of external inertia loads.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.41 no.8
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• pp.505-510
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• 2017

This paper presents a low-cost robotic device for shoulder rehabilitation, which is capable of treating various shoulder disabilities. A 3-DOF passive shoulder joint tracking module was designed to allow for translational motion of the shoulder joint center during arm swing, which is essential for natural shoulder movement. The weight of the user's arm and the device were compensated for by springs, to enable gravity-free shoulder motion. In order to reduce the device's cost, only one actuator was used, which can be aligned with the user's shoulder joint in various orientations. The device is capable of implementing five representative shoulder motions, including flexion/extension, abduction/adduction, horizontal abd/adduction, internal/external rotation, and oblique raise. The proposed low-cost shoulder rehabilitation robot is expected to provide effective rehabilitation for patients with various shoulder impairments.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.483-498
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• 2017

Real-Time Hybrid Simulation (RTHS) is a powerful and cost-effective dynamic experimental technique. To implement a stable and accurate RTHS, time delay present in the experiment loop needs to be compensated. This delay is mostly introduced by servo-hydraulic actuator dynamics and can be reduced by applying appropriate compensators. Existing compensators have demonstrated effective performance in achieving good tracking performance. Most of them have been focused on their application in cases where the structure under investigation is subjected to inputs with relatively low frequency bandwidth such as earthquake excitations. To advance RTHS as an attractive technique for other engineering applications with broader excitation frequency, a discrete-time feedforward compensator is developed herein via various optimization techniques to enhance the performance of RTHS. The proposed compensator is unique as a discrete-time, model-based feedforward compensator. The feedforward control is chosen because it can substantially improve the reference tracking performance and speed when the plant dynamics is well-understood and modeled. The discrete-time formulation enables the use of inherently stable digital filters for compensator development, and avoids the error induced by continuous-time to discrete-time conversion during the compensator implementation in digital computer. This paper discusses the technical challenges in designing a discrete-time compensator, and proposes several optimal solutions to resolve these challenges. The effectiveness of compensators obtained via these optimal solutions is demonstrated through both numerical and experimental studies. Then, the proposed compensators have been successfully applied to RTHS tests. By comparing these results to results obtained using several existing feedforward compensators, the proposed compensator demonstrates superior performance in both time delay and Root-Mean-Square (RMS) error.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.778-791
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• 2005

A novel pneumatic artificial muscle actuator (PAM actuator), which has achieved increased popularity to provide the advantages such as high strength and high power/weight ratio, low cost, compactness, ease of maintenance, cleanliness, readily available and cheap power source, inherent safety and mobility assistance to humans performing tasks, has been regarded during the recent decades as an interesting alternative to hydraulic and electric actuators. However, some limitations still exist, such as the air compressibility and the lack of damping ability of the actuator bring the dynamic delay of the pressure response and cause the oscillatory motion. Then it is not easy to realize the performance of transient response of pneumatic artificial muscle manipulator (PAM manipulator) due to the changes in the external inertia load with high speed. In order to realize satisfactory control performance, a variable damper-Magneto­Rheological Brake (MRB), is equipped to the joint of the manipulator. Superb mixture of conventional PID controller and a phase plane switching control method brings us a novel controller. This proposed controller is appropriate for a kind of plants with nonlinearity, uncertainties and disturbances. The experiments were carried out in practical PAM manipulator and the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm was demonstrated through experiments, which had proved that the stability of the manipulator can be improved greatly in a high gain control by using MRB with phase plane switching control method and without regard for the changes of external inertia loads.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.6090-6097
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• 2013

A pneumatically-driven driving simulator that provides a realistic representation of the driving environment was developed. The motion platform for the driving simulator is a mechatronic device that gives a driver the realistic feeling of an actual vehicle. The cost of the motion platform comprises the largest part of the expenses in developing a driving simulator. In this project, to develop a low-cost motion platform, the self-built motion platform based on the Stewart platform configuration that is constructed by six pneumatic cylinders was used as its actuator. The Stewart platform that moves in response to the operating signals of the joystick showed satisfactory tracking performance. We confirmed the possibility of the driving simulator using rFactor that is a commercially available racing game software.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.292-299
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• 1999

DC motors are widely used in many industrial fields as the actuator of the robot and the driving power motors of the electrical vehicle, Usually in the sensors of DC motors such as the encoder the tachogenerator and the potentiometer etc. are applied, But usage of these sensors results in the increased price and operating cost such that the application of the motors are limitted. To solve this problem another method to construct low cost control system is investigates. In this paper a new speed control method for DC motor is proposed. This method uses motor parameters instead of using speed or position sensors. In this way the angular velocity is estimated by the measure-ment values of the armature voltage and current instead of measuring the sensor signal. This paper presents an alorithm for estimating the angular velocity of DC motor The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experimental results. Also the applicability of the proposed method is presented by applying to the velocity contol of a wheeled mobile robot.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.267-272
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• 2002

The production of micro components is one of the leading technologies in the fields of information and communiation, medical and biotechnology, and micro sensor and micro actuator system. Microfabrication (micromachining) techniques such as X-ray lithography, electroforming, micromolding and excimer laser ablation are used for the production of micro components out of silicon, polymer and a limited number of pure metals or binary alloys. However, since the first development of microfabrication technologies there have been demands for the cost-effective replication in large scale series as well as the extended range of available material. One such promising process is micro powder injection molding (PIM), which inherits the advantages of the conventional PIM technology, such as low production cost, shape complexity, applicability to many materials, applicability to many materials, and good tolerance. This paper reports on a fundamental investigation of the application of W-Cu powder to micro metal injection molding (MIM), especially in view of achieving a good filling and a safe removal of a micro mold conducted in the experiment. It is absolutely legitimate and meaningful, at the present state of the technique, to continue developing the micro MIM towards production processes for micro components.