• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.45-51
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• 2023

During the operation of a nuclear power plant (NPP), the waste reactor vessel closure head (RVCH) that is replaced owing to design or manufacturing defects is buried in a designated area or temporarily stored in a radiation shielding facility within the NPP. In such cases, storing it for extended periods proves a challenge owing to space constraints in the power plant and a safety risk associated with radiation exposure; therefore, dismantling it quickly and safely is crucial. However, not much research has been done on the dismantling of the RVCH in an operational power plant. This study proposes a dismantling process based on the radioactive contamination level measured for the Kori #1 RVCH, which is currently being discarded and stored, and examines the decontamination and cutting according to this process. In addition, the amount of secondary waste and dismantling cost are evaluated, and the dismantling effect of the reactor closure head is analyzed.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2022.11a
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• pp.1044-1046
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• 2022

'22년 중대재해처벌법과 항만안전특별법이 본격 시행되었다. 이에 대비하기 위하여 본 논문에서는 위험물 컨테이너에서 발생하는 안전사고를 사전에 방지하는 지능형 컨테이너 및 청소 로봇을 제안한다. 지능형 컨테이너 및 청소 로봇은 다음과 같은 기능을 수행한다. 첫째, 유해물질 감지 센서와 산소 센서 등을 통해 컨테이너 상태를 실시간으로 관리한다. 둘째, 유해물질 유출 및 산소 농도가 부족한 경우 위험 컨테이너로 변경 관리한다. 셋째, 컨테이너 내부 유해물질 청소를 위해 로봇을 호출하고 지능형 청소 로봇은 방제약품과 흡착포를 통해 컨테이너 내부를 청소한다. 넷째, 위험 컨테이너는 자동문 개폐관리 기능을 통해 유해물질 청소 완료 전까지 문을 폐쇄하여 안전사고를 방지한다. 본 논문은 제시한 기능을 통해 위험물 컨테이너에서 발생하는 작업자 질식사 등의 사고를 감소시키는 것을 목표로 한다.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.39-44
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• 2024

This study introduces a novel method for predicting the shape of soft catheter robots embedded with electromagnets. As an advancement in the realm of soft robotics, these catheter robots are crafted from flexible and pliable materials, ensuring enhanced safety and adaptability during interactions with human tissues. Given the pivotal role of catheters in minimally invasive surgeries (MIS), our design stands out by facilitating active control over the orientation and intensity of the inbuilt electromagnets. This ensures precise targeting and manipulation of the catheter segments. The research encompasses a comprehensive breakdown of the magnetic modeling, tracking algorithms, experimental layout, and analytical techniques. Both simulation and experimental results validate the efficacy of our method, underscoring its potential to augment accuracy in MIS and revolutionize healthcare-oriented soft robotics.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.266-273
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• 2024

With the rising interaction between robots and humans, detecting collisions has become increasingly vital for ensuring safety. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for detecting collisions without using force torque sensors or tactile sensors, utilizing a Transformer-based neural network architecture. The proposed collision detection approach comprises a torque estimator network that predicts the joint torque in a free-motion state using Synchronous time-step encoding, and a collision discriminator network that predicts collisions by leveraging the difference between estimated and actual torques. The collision discriminator finally creates a binary tensor that predicts collisions frame by frame. In simulations, the proposed network exhibited enhanced collision detection performance relative to the other kinds of networks both in terms of prediction speed and accuracy. This underscores the benefits of using Transformer networks for collision detection tasks, where rapid decision-making is essential.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.659-662
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• 2008

Video-assisted pulmonary lobectomy was introduced in the early 1990's by several authors, and the frequency of video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) lobectomy for lung cancer has been slowly increasing because of its safety and oncologic acceptability in patients with early stage lung cancer However, VATS is limited by 2D imaging, an unsteady camera platform, and limited maneuverability of its instruments. The da Vinci Surgical System was recently introduced to overcome these limitations. It has a 3D endoscopic system with high resolution and magnified binocular views and EndoWrist instruments. We report three cases of da Vinci robot system-assisted pulmonary lobectomy in patients with early stage lung cancer.

• 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.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.345-355
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• 2014

Since the beginning of the 21st century, emergence of innovative technologies in robotic and telepresence surgery has revolutionized minimally access surgery and continually has advanced them till recent years. One of such surgeries is endoscopic surgery, in which endoscope and endoscopic instruments are inserted into the body through small incision or natural openings, surgical operations being carried out by a laparoscopic procedure. Due to a vast amount of developments in this technology, this review article describes only a technological state-of-the arts and trend of endoscopic robots, being further limited to the aspects of key components, their functional requirements and operational procedure in surgery. In particular, it first describes technological limitations in developments of key components and then focuses on the description of the performance required for their functions, which include position control, tracking, navigation, and manipulation of the flexible endoscope body and its end effector as well, and so on. In spite of these rapid developments in functional components, endoscopic surgical robots should be much smaller, less expensive, easier to operate, and should seamlessly integrate emerging technologies for their intelligent vision and dexterous hands not only from the points of the view of surgical, ergonomic but also from safety. We believe that in these respects a medical robotic technology related to endoscopic surgery continues to be revolutionized in the near future, sufficient enough to replace almost all kinds of current endoscopic surgery. This issue remains to be addressed elsewhere in some other review articles.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.368-374
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• 2013

Maintenance works for current high-rise buildings significantly depend on human labor, unlike other construction processes that are gradually being automated. Herein, this paper proposes robotic building maintenance system using motion control, in specific, reducing a system jerk which is directly subjected to improve the process performance and economic feasibility. The sensor for detecting straight and curvature section of the building facade, moreover rail-joint segment can be detected and be utilized for reducing jerk of the system. Analysis of the proposed system error caused by excessive vibration, e.g. jerk motion is introduced. To enhance the stability and safety of the system, herein, the strategy is proposed for enhancing the performance of the system based on anti-jerk motion control algorithm which comes out increasing the stability and sustainability of the integrated system, as well.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.1029-1035
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• 2013

This paper proposes a real time lane detection algorithm using LRF (Laser Range Finder) for autonomous navigation of a mobile robot. There are many technologies for safety of the vehicles such as airbags, ABS, EPS etc. The real time lane detection is a fundamental requirement for an automobile system that utilizes outside information of automobiles. Representative methods of lane recognition are vision-based and LRF-based systems. By the vision-based system, recognition of environment for three dimensional space becomes excellent only in good conditions for capturing images. However there are so many unexpected barriers such as bad illumination, occlusions, and vibrations that the vision cannot be used for satisfying the fundamental requirement. In this paper, we introduce a three dimensional lane detection algorithm using LRF, which is very robust against the illumination. For the three dimensional lane detections, the laser reflection difference between the asphalt and lane according to the color and distance has been utilized with the extraction of feature points. Also a stable tracking algorithm is introduced empirically in this research. The performance of the proposed algorithm of lane detection and tracking has been verified through the real experiments.

• Journal of Internet of Things and Convergence
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.37-44
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• 2023

As a primary technology of Industry 4.0, human-robot collaboration (HRC) requires additional measures to ensure worker safety. Previous studies on avoiding collisions between collaborative robots and workers mainly detect collisions based on sensors and cameras attached to the robot. This method requires complex algorithms to continuously track robots, people, and objects and has the disadvantage of not being able to respond quickly to changes in the work environment. The present study was conducted to implement a web-based platform that manages collaborative robots by recognizing the emotions of workers - specifically their perception of danger - in the collaborative process. To this end, we developed a web-based application that collects and stores emotion-related brain waves via a wearable device; a deep-learning model that extracts and classifies the characteristics of neutral, positive, and negative emotions; and an Internet-of-things (IoT) interface program that controls motor operation according to classified emotions. We conducted a comparative analysis of our system's performance using a public open dataset and a dataset collected through actual measurement, achieving validation accuracies of 96.8% and 70.7%, respectively.