• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.208-220
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• 2006

Energy of wheeled mobile robot is usually supplied by batteries. In order to extend operation time of mobile robots, it is necessary to minimize the energy consumption. The energy is dissipated mostly in the motors, which strongly depends on the velocity profile. This paper investigates various 3-step (acceleration - cruise - deceleration) speed control methods to minimize a new energy object function which considers the practical energy consumption dissipated in motors related to motor control input, velocity profile, and motor dynamics. We performed an analysis on the energy consumption various velocity profile patterns generated by standard control input such as step input, ramp input, parabolic input, and exponential input. Based on these standard control inputs, we analyzed the six 3-step velocity profile patterns: E-C-E, P-C-P, R-C-R, S-C-S, R-C-S, and S-C-R (S means a step control input, R means a ramp control input, P means a parabolic control input, and E means an exponential control input, C means a constant cruise velocity), and suggested an efficient iterative search algorithm with binary search which can find the numerical solution quickly. We performed various computer simulations to show the performance of the energy-optimal 3-step speed control in comparison with a conventional 3-step speed control with a reasonable constant acceleration as a benchmark. Simulation results show that the E-C-E is the most energy efficient 3-step velocity profile pattern, which enables wheeled mobile robot to extend working time up to 50%.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.5-8
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• 1999

The main stream of researches on the mobile robot is planning motions of the mobile robot under nonholonomic constraints while only considering kinematic model of a mobile robot. These researches, however, assume that there is some kind of dynamic controller which can produce perfectly the same velocity that is necessary for the kinematic controller. Moreover, there are little results about the problem of integrating the nonholonomic kinematic controller and the dynamic controller for a mobile robot. Also the literature on the robustness of the controller in the presence of uncertainties or external disturbances in the dynamical model of a mobile robot is very few. Thus, in this paper, the robust adaptive controller which can achieve velocity tracking while considering not only kinematic model but also dynamic model of the mobile robot is proposed. The stability of the dynamic system will be shown through the Lyapunov method.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1927-1932
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• 2003

In a previous study, the authors have proposed the Cooperative Collision Avoidance (CCA) method which enables mobile robots to cooperatively avoid collisions, by extending the concept of the Velocity Obstacle to multiple robot systems. The method introduced an evaluation function considering an operation objective so that each robot can choose the velocity which optimizes the function. As the evaluation function could be of an arbitrary type, this method is applicable to a wide variety of tasks. However, it complicates the optimization of the function especially in real-time. In addition, construction of the evaluation function requires an operation objective of the other robot which is very hard to obtain without communication. In this paper, the CCA method is improved considering such problems for implementation. To decrease computational costs, the previous method is simplified by introducing two essential assumptions. Then, by treating the desired direction of locomotion for each robot as the operation objective, an operation objective estimator which estimates the desired direction of the other robot is introduced. The only measurement required is the other robot's relative position, since the other information can be obtained through the estimation. Hence, communicational devices that are necessary for most other cooperative methods are not required. Moreover, mobile robots employing the method can avoid collisions with uncooperative robots or moving obstacles as well as with cooperative robots. Consequently, this improved method can be applied to general dynamic environments consisting of various mobile robots.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.896-902
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• 2007

This paper proposes a vision-based kinematic control method for mobile robots with camera-on-board. In the previous literature on the control of mobile robots using camera vision information, the forward velocity is set to be a constant, and only the rotational velocity of the robot is controlled. More efficient motion, however, is needed by controlling the forward velocity, depending on the position in the corridor. Thus, both forward and rotational velocities are controlled in the proposed method such that the mobile robots can move faster when the comer of the corridor is far away, and it slows down as it approaches the dead end of the corridor. In this way, the smooth turning motion along the corridor is possible. To this end, visual information using the camera is used to obtain the perspective lines and the distance from the current robot position to the dead end. Then, the vanishing point and the pseudo desired position are obtained, and the forward and rotational velocities are controlled by the LOS(Line Of Sight) guidance law. Both numerical and experimental results are included to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.1693-1703
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• 2003

This paper presents a new local obstacle avoidance method for indoor mobile robots. The method uses a new directional approach called the Lane Method. The Lane Method is combined with a velocity space method i.e., the Curvature-Velocity Method to form the Lane-Curvature Method (LCM). The Lane Method divides the work area into lanes, and then chooses the best lane to follow to optimize travel along a desired goal heading. A local heading is then calculated for entering and following the best lane, and CVM uses this local heading to determine the optimal translational and rotational velocities, considering some physical limitations and environmental constraint. By combining both the directional and velocity space methods, LCM yields safe collision-free motion as well as smooth motion taking the physical limitations of the robot motion into account.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.856-861
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• 2011

The mobile robot controller is designed to track the target and to maintain the formation at the same time. Formation control is included in mobile robot controller by extending the trajectory tracking algorithm. The dynamic model of mobile robot is used with kinematic model considering the practical physical parameters of mobile robot. The dynamic model of mobile robot transforms velocity control input of kinematic model into torque control input which is the practical control input of mobile robot. Formation controller of mobile robot is designed to satisfy Lyapunov stability by backstepping method. The designed formation controller is applied to the mobile robot for various target movements and simulated to confirm the Lyapunov stability.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1991.10a
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• pp.1046-1051
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• 1991

For the conveyor tracking application of a robot manipulator, a new control scheme is presented. The presented scheme is divided into two stages : the upper one is the motion planning stage and the lower one is the motion control stage. In the upper stage, the nominal trajectory which tracks the part moving in a constant velocity, is planned considering the robot arm dynamics. On the other hand, in the lower level, the perturbed trajectory is generated to track the variation in the velocity of conveyor belt via sensory feedback and the perturbed arm dynamics. In both stages, the conveyor tracking problem is formulated as an optimal tracking problem, and the torque constraints of a robot manipulator are taken into account. Simulation results are then presented and discussed.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.5 no.8
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• pp.948-954
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• 1999

In this paper, we propose a cooperative motion planning algorithm for two tightly-coupled mobile robots. Specifically, the considered cooperative work is that two mobile robots should transfer a long rigid object along a predefined path. To resolve the problem, we introduce a master-slave concept for two obile robots having the same structure. According to the velocity of the master robot and the positions of two robots on the path, the velocity of the slave robot is determined. The slave normally tracks the master's motion, but in case that the velocity of the slave exceeds the velocity limit, the roles of the robots should be interchanged. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is proved by computer simulations.

• Transactions on Control, Automation and Systems Engineering
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.56-61
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• 2002

In this paper we describe an approach to coordinating the motion of a human with a mobile robot moving in a populated, continuously changing. natural environment. Our test application is a wheelchair accompanying a person through the concourse of a railway station moving side by side with the person. Our approach is based on a method for motion planning amongst moving obstacles known as Velocity Obstacle approach. We extend this method by a method for tracking a virtual target which allows us to vary the robot's heading and velocity with the locomotion of the accompanied person and the state of the surrounding environment.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.1269-1274
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• 2004

This paper presents a new quantisation algorithm which has the closed-loop form and guarantees the boundness of accumulative error. This algorithm is particularly useful for mobile robot navigation that is usually implemented on embedded systems. If wheel commands of the mobile robot are given by velocity or positional increment at every control instant and quantised due to finite word length of controller's CPU, the quantisation error gets accumulated to causes large position error. Such an error accumulative characteristic is fatal for non wheeled mobile robots or autonomous vehicles with non-holonomic constraint. To solve this problem, we propose a non-error accumulative quantisation algorithm with closed-loop form. We also show it can be extend to a generalized form corresponding to the n-th order accumulation. The boundness of the accumulative quantisation error is investigated by a series of computer simulation. The proposed method is particularly effective to precise navigation control the autonomous mobile robots.