• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.92-97
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• 2024

This paper provides a study of distributional perspective on reinforcement learning for application in mobile robot navigation. Mapless navigation algorithms based on deep reinforcement learning are proven to promising performance and high applicability. The trial-and-error simulations in virtual environments are encouraged to implement autonomous navigation due to expensive real-life interactions. Nevertheless, applying the deep reinforcement learning model in real tasks is challenging due to dissimilar data collection between virtual simulation and the physical world, leading to high-risk manners and high collision rate. In this paper, we present distributional reinforcement learning architecture for mapless navigation of mobile robot that adapt the uncertainty of environmental change. The experimental results indicate the superior performance of distributional soft actor critic compared to conventional methods.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.594-600
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• 2012

Accurate localization is very important to stable navigation of a mobile robot. This paper deals with local localization of a mobile robot especially for outdoor environments. The GPS information is the easiest way to obtain the outdoor position information. However, the GPS accuracy can be severely affected by environmental conditions. To deal with this problem, the GPS and wheel odometry can be combined using an EKF (Extended Kalman Filter). However, this is not enough for safe navigation of a mobile robot in outdoor environments. This paper proposes a novel method using lane features from the road image. The pose data of a mobile robot can be corrected by analyzing the detected lane features. This can improve the accuracy of the localization process substantially.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.151-169
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• 2014

We propose a new technique for autonomous navigation and travelling of mobile robot based on ultrasonic sensors through the narrow labyrinth that leave only distance of a few centimeters on each side between the guides and the robot. In our current implementation the ultrasonic sensor system fires at a rate of 100 ms, that is, each of the 8 sensors fires once during each 100 ms interval. This is a very good firing rate, implemented here for optimal performance. This paper presents an extensively tested and verified solution to the problem of obstacle avoidance. Our solution is based on the optimal placement of ultrasonic sensors at strategic locations around the robot. Both the sensor location and the associated navigation algorithm are defined in such a way that only the accurate radial sonar data is used for accurate travelling.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.07d
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• pp.2401-2403
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• 2002

Given a certain target point, the mobile robot's navigation could be mainly considered about two areas, 'how fast and accurate' and 'how safe'. Such problems regarding the velocity and stability possess close relationship with the path in which the mobile robot navigates in. Thus, the system proposed in this research paper was constructed so the mobile robot can obtain the optimum path by utilizing the information according to the environmental map, based on the Global Path Planning. Also by inducing the Local Path Planning method, it was constructed so that the robots can avoid the obstacles, which were not shown in the environmental map on-line. Particularly, by fusing the Local and Global Path Planning together, it is possible for the robots to plan similar path. At the same time, the focus was on the materialization of effective mobile robot's navigation. It was made possible by utilizing the Fuzzy Logic Control. Also, the validity of the algorithm proposed was proven through the trial experiment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.304-313
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• 2005

The robots that will be needed in the near future are human-friendly robots that are able to coexist with humans and support humans effectively. To realize this, robot need to recognize his position and direction for intelligent performance in an unknown environment. And the mobile robots may navigate by means of a number of monitoring systems such as the sonar-sensing system or the visual-sensing system. Notice that in the conventional fusion schemes, the measurement is dependent on the current data sets only. Therefore, more of sensors are required to measure a certain physical parameter or to improve the accuracy of the measurement. However, in this research, instead of adding more sensors to the system, the temporal sequence of the data sets are stored and utilized for the accurate measurement. As a general approach of sensor fusion, a UT -Based Sensor Fusion(UTSF) scheme using Unscented Transformation(UT) is proposed for either joint or disjoint data structure and applied to the landmark identification for mobile robot navigation. Theoretical basis is illustrated by examples and the effectiveness is proved through the simulations and experiments. The newly proposed, UT-Based UTSF scheme is applied to the navigation of a mobile robot in an unstructured environment as well as structured environment, and its performance is verified by the computer simulation and the experiment.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.836-846
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• 2023

Mobile robots are used in modern life; however, object recognition is still insufficient to realize robot navigation in crowded environments. Mobile robots must rapidly and accurately recognize the movements and shapes of pedestrians to navigate safely in pedestrian-rich spaces. This study proposes real-time, accurate, three-dimensional (3D) multi-pedestrian detection and tracking using a 3D light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point cloud in crowded environments. The pedestrian detection quickly segments a sparse 3D point cloud into individual pedestrians using a lightweight convolutional autoencoder and connected-component algorithm. The multi-pedestrian tracking identifies the same pedestrians considering motion and appearance cues in continuing frames. In addition, it estimates pedestrians' dynamic movements with various patterns by adaptively mixing heterogeneous motion models. We evaluate the computational speed and accuracy of each module using the KITTI dataset. We demonstrate that our integrated system, which rapidly and accurately recognizes pedestrian movement and appearance using a sparse 3D LiDAR, is applicable for robot navigation in crowded spaces.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.391-399
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• 2012

This paper proposes a particle filter approach for SLAM(Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) of a mobile robot. The SLAM denotes estimation of both the robot location and map while the robot navigates in an unknown environment without map. The proposed method estimates robot location simultaneously with the locations of the ultrasonic beacons which constitute landmarks for navigation. The particle filter method represents the locations of the robot and landmarks in probabilistic manner by the distribution of particles. The method takes care of the uncertainty of the landmarks' location as well as that of the robot motion. Therefore, the locations of the landmarks are updated including uncertainty at every sampling time. Performance of the proposed method is verified through simulation and experiments. The method yields practically useful mapping information even if the range data from the landmarks include random noise. Also, it provides more accurate and robust estimation of the robot location than the usual least squares methods or dead-reckoning method.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.456-462
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• 2014

In this paper, we present a deployable bio-inspired robot called the Pillbot-light, which utilizes a safe autonomous navigation system. The Pillbot-light is mounted the station robot, and can be operated in a disaster relief operation or military operation. However, the Pilbot-light has a challenge to navigate autonomously because the Pilbot-light cannot be equipped with various sensors. As a result, we propose a new robot system for autonomous navigation that the station robot controls Pillbot-light equipped with vision camera and CPU of high performance. This system detects obstacles based on the edge extraction using vision camera. Also, it cannot only achieve path planning using the hazard cost function, but also localization using the Particle Filter. And this system is verified by simulation and experiment.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.55-61
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• 2020

Getting on and off an elevator is one of the most important parts for multi-floor navigation of a mobile robot. In this study, we proposed the method for the pose recognition of elevator doors, safe path planning, and motion estimation of a robot using RGB-D sensors in order to safely get on and off the elevator. The accurate pose of the elevator doors is recognized using a particle filter algorithm. After the elevator door is open, the robot builds an occupancy grid map including the internal environments of the elevator to generate a safe path. The safe path prevents collision with obstacles in the elevator. While the robot gets on and off the elevator, the robot uses the optical flow algorithm of the floor image to detect the state that the robot cannot move due to an elevator door sill. The experimental results in various experiments show that the proposed method enables the robot to get on and off the elevator safely.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.305-314
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• 2015

The work presented in this paper deals with a navigation problem for multiple mobile robot system in unknown indoor environments. The environment is completely unknown for all the robots and the surrounding information should be detected by the proximity sensors installed on the robots' bodies. In order to guide all the robots to move along collision-free paths and reach the goal positions, a navigation method based on the combination of a set of primary strategies has been developed. The indoor environments usually contain convex and concave obstacles. In this work, a danger judgment strategy in accordance with the sensors' data is used for avoiding small convex obstacles or moving objects which include both dynamic obstacles and other robots. For big convex obstacles or concave ones, a wall following strategy is designed for dealing with these special situations. In this paper, a state memorizing strategy is also proposed for the "infinite repetition" or "dead cycle" situations. Finally, when there is no collision risk, the robots will be guided towards the targets according to a target positioning strategy. Most of these strategies are achieved by the means of fuzzy logic controllers and uniformly applied for every robot. The simulation experiments verified that the proposed method has a positive effectiveness for the navigation problem.