• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.961-970
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• 2004

Tactile sensation is one of the most important sensory functions along with the auditory sensation for the visually impaired since it replaces the visual one of the persons with sight. In this paper, we present a tactile display device as a dynamic Braille display that is the unique tool f3r exchanging information among them. The tactile cell of the Braille display proposed is based on the dielectric elastomer, which is one of the electroactive polymers. It has advantageous features over the existing ones with respect to intrinsic softness, ease of fabrication, cost effectiveness and miniaturization. We introduce a new idea for actuation as well as additional considerations such as the driving circuit that makes it possible to drive multiple tactile cells in a high speed. Also, we describe the actuating mechanism of the Braille pin in details capable of realizing the enhanced spatial density of the tactile cells. Finally, results of psychophysical experiments are given to evaluate its effectiveness.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.1028-1036
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• 2004

Ultrasonic sensors are widely used in mobile robot applications to recognize external environments by virtue that they are cheap, easy to use, and robust under varying lighting conditions. In most cases, a single ultrasonic sensor is used to measure the distance to an object based on time-of-flight (TOF) information, whereas multiple sensors are used to recognize the shape of an object, such as a comer, plane, or edge. However, the conventional sequential driving technique involves a long measurement time. This problem can be resolved by pulse coding of ultrasonic signals, which allows multi-sensors to be emitted simultaneously and adjacent objects to be distinguished. Accordingly, this paper presents a new simultaneous coded driving system for an ultrasonic sensor array for object recognition in autonomous mobile robots. The proposed system is designed and implemented. A micro-controller unit is implemented using a DSP, Polaroid 6500 ranging modules are modified for firing the coded signals, and a 5-channel coded signal generating board is made using a FPGA. To verify the proposed method, experiments were conducted in an environment with overlapping signals, and the flight distances fur each sensor were obtained from the received overlapping signals using correlations and conversion to a bipolar PCM-NRZ signal.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.1052-1057
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• 2004

Bluetooth technology is essentially a method for wireless connectivity of a diverse set of devices ranging from PDAs, mobile phone, notebook computers, to another equipments, The bluetooth system both point-to point connection and point-to multipoint connection. In point-to multipoint connection, the channel is shared among several bluetooth devices. Two or more devices sharing the same channel form a piconet. There one master device and up to seven active slave devices in a piconet. The radio operates in the unlicensed 2.45GHz ISM band. This allows users who travel world-wide to use bluetooth equipments anywhere. Since the link is based on frequency-hop spread spectrum, multiple channels can exist at the same time. The bluetooth standard ha s been suggested that bluetooth equipments can be used in the short-range, maximum 100 meters. It has been defined that the time takes to setup and establish a bluetooth connection among devices is 10 seconds. It is a long time and may be a cause to lose a chance of finding other non-fixed devices. We propose a routing protocols for scatternets which can be used to control a mobile units(MUs) in this network. The proposed routing protocol is composed of two kinds of bluetooth information, access point(AP) and MU.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.328-336
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• 2012

In this paper, we propose a robust fingertip extraction and extended Continuously Adaptive Mean Shift (CAMSHIFT) based robust hand gesture recognition for natural human-like HRI (Human-Robot Interaction). Firstly, for efficient and rapid hand detection, the hand candidate regions are segmented by the combination with robust $YC_bC_r$ skin color model and haar-like features based adaboost. Using the extracted hand candidate regions, we estimate the palm region and fingertip position from distance transformation based voting and geometrical feature of hands. From the hand orientation and palm center position, we find the optimal fingertip position and its orientation. Then using extended CAMSHIFT, we reliably track the 2D hand gesture trajectory with extracted fingertip. Finally, we applied the conditional density propagation (CONDENSATION) to recognize the pre-defined temporal motion trajectories. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm not only rapidly extracts the hand region with accurately extracted fingertip and its angle but also robustly tracks the hand under different illumination, size and rotation conditions. Using these results, we successfully recognize the multiple hand gestures.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.375-383
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• 2012

Together with the GPS-based approach, geolocation through mobile communication networks is a key technology for location-based service. Since the Mobile WiMAX system is considered as a candidate for fourth-generation mobile systems, it is important to investigate its location capability. The geolocation of Mobile WiMAX can be realized when the preamble symbols in the down-link channel are appropriately used for a TDOA (Time-Difference-of-Arrival) approach. However, the cellular structure of Mobile WiMAX inevitably generates co-channel interference, and it is difficult for the mobile terminal to acquire distance measurements from multiple base stations. Therefore, for geolocation via multilateration using the Mobile WiMAX network, it is very important to increase hearability. This paper proposes a geolocation method for Mobile WiMAX which employs interference cancellation and preamble signal overlapping for the enhancement of hearability. A novel interference cancellation strategy for complex-valued Mobile WiMAX signals is presented which has an iterative structure. Simulation results show that the proposed geolocation method provides the user's position with an accuracy of less than 20 m through the Mobile WiMAX cellular network if there is no multi-path or NLOS (None-Line-of-Sight).

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.752-759
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose a high accurate geo-location system based on a single base station, where its location is obtained by Time-of-Arrival(ToA) and Direction-of-Arrival(DoA) of the radio signal. For estimating accurate ToA and DoA information, a MUltiple SIgnal Classification(MUSIC) is adopted. However, the estimation of ToA and DoA using MUSIC algorithm is a time-consuming process. The position tracking bias is occurred by the time delay caused by the estimation process. In order to mitigate the bias error, we propose the estimation method of the position tracking bias and compensate the location error produced by the time delay using the position tracking bias mitigation. For accurate self-localization of mobile robot, the Unscented Kalman Filter(UKF) with position tracking bias is applied. The simulation results show the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed geo-location system and the enhanced performance when the Unscented Kalman Filter is adopted for mobile robot application.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.644-650
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• 2005

The expected positioning accuracies of civil users utilizing modernized GPS and Galileo are derived using the error analysis in this paper. Since, in general, the performance of DLL, PLL and FLL is proportional to chip lengths and wavelengths, the positioning accuracies from various measurements of modernized GPS and Galileo are derived as function of chip length and wavelength. These results are compared with that from GPS Ll measurement. In absolute positioning, compared to GPS C/A code only case, more than 17 times performance improvement is expected when all civil code signals of modernized GPS and Galileo (L1, L2, L5, E1, E5A and E5B) are used. In relative positioning, compared to GPS L1 carrier phase only case, more than 2 times performance improvement is expected when all civil signals of modernized GPS and Calileo are used. Furthermore, the relationship between GDOP and RGDOP in single frequency case is expanded to general case where multiple frequencies and both code and carrier phase measurements are used.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.579-583
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to suggest IDE (Incremental Displacement Estimation) algorithm for the previously proposed visually servoed paired structured light system. The system is composed of two sides facing with each other, each with one or two lasers with a 2-DOF manipulator, a camera, and a screen. The 6-DOF displacement between two sides can be estimated by calculating the positions of the projected laser beams and rotation angles of the manipulators. In the previous study, Newton-Raphson or EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) has been used as an estimation algorithm. Although the various experimental tests have validated the performance of the system and estimation algorithms, the computation time is relatively long since aforementioned algorithms are iterative methods. Therefore, in this paper, a non-iterative incremental displacement estimation algorithm which updates the previously estimated displacement with a difference of the previous and the current observed data is introduced. To verify the performance of the algorithm, experimental tests have been performed. The results show that the proposed non-iterative algorithm estimates the displacement with the same level of accuracy compared to the EKF with multiple iterations with significantly less computation time.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.631-636
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• 2007

An efficient obstacle avoidance algorithm is proposed in this paper to avoid dynamic obstacles using a collision vector while a tele-operated mobile robot is moving. For the verification of the algorithm, an operator watches through a monitor and controls the mobile robot with a force-reflection joystick. The force-reflection joystick transmits a virtual force to the operator through the Inter-net, which is generated by an adaptive impedance algorithm. To keep the mobile robot safe from collisions in an uncertain environment, the adaptive impedance algorithm generates the virtual force which changes the command of the operator by pushing the operator's hand to a direction to avoid the obstacle. In the conventional virtual force algorithm, the avoidance of moving obstacles was not solved since the operator cannot recognize the environment realistically by the limited communication bandwidth and the narrow view-angle of the camera. To achieve the dynamic obstacle avoidance, the adaptive virtual force algorithm is proposed based on the collision vector that is a normal vector from the obstacle to the mobile robot. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, mobile robot navigation experiments with multiple moving obstacles have been performed, and the results are demonstrated.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.677-682
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• 2007

Concurrent competition for finite resources by multiple parts in flexible manufacturing systems(FMS's) and inappropriate initial marking or net structure of Petri net with share resources results in deadlock. This is an important issue to be addressed in the operation of the systems. Deadlock is a system state so that some working processes can never be finished. Deadlock situation is due to a wrong resource allocation policy. In fact, behind a deadlock problem there is a circular wait situation for a set of resources. Deadlock can disable an entire system and make automated operation impossible. Particularly, an unmanned system cannot recover from such a status and a set of jobs waits indefinitely for never-to-be-released resources. In this paper, we proposed a deadlock prevention method using siphon and trap of Petri net. It is based on potential deadlock which are siphon that eventually became empty. This method prevents the deadlock by the control of transition fire and initial marking in the Petri net. An given example of FMS is shown to illustrate our results with deadlock-free.