• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.1232-1239
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• 2009

This paper proposes an exploration strategy to efficiently find a specific place in large unknown environments with wall-following based path planning. Many exploration methods proposed so far showed good performance but they focused only on efficient planning for modeling unknown environments. Therefore, to successfully accomplish the room finding task, two additional requirements should be considered. First, suitable path-planning is needed to recognize the room number. Most conventional exploration schemes used the gradient method to extract the optimal path. In these schemes, the paths are extracted in the middle of the free space which is usually far from the wall. If the robot follows such a path, it is not likely to recognize the room number written on the wall because room numbers are usually too small to be recognized by camera image from a distance. Second, the behavior which re-explores the explored area is needed. Even though the robot completes exploration, it is possible that some rooms are not registered in the constructed map for some reasons such as poor recognition performance, occlusion by a human and so on. With this scheme, the robot does not have to visit and model the whole environment. This proposed method is very simple but it guarantees that the robot can find a specific room in most cases. The proposed exploration strategy was verified by various experiments.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.49 no.8
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• pp.473-480
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• 2000

A fuzzy PID controller is proposed for the posture control of a two DOF robot vehicle inspecting the defects of the inner wall of sewage pipes. The main difficulty in controlling these kinds of vehicles lies in that the center of two mobile shafts does not coincide with the weight center of the vehicle due to its long and wide shape. In this case the previous controller, based on the assumption that the gap between these centers are small, can not guarantee satisfactory transient response characteristics. In this paper, this gap is included in the mathematical modelling of the robot kinematics, and in order to compensate the unsatisfactory transient response characteristics, the fuzzy PID controller is proposed. This controller tunes the PID control gains with respect to the current state of the errors between the reference and the current postures. A series of simulations has been performed to investigate the tracking performance of the proposed controller for the lane changing path and the robustness to the external disturbance. The simulation results show that the proposed controller has a satisfactory tracking performance in the transient state as compared with that of the backstepping control given in reference.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.48 no.11
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• pp.1448-1456
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• 1999

In this paper, we propose a new technique for path-following of the wheeled mobile robot systems with nonholonomic constraints using a path-observer. We discuss the path-following problems of the nonholonomic mobile robot systems which have two nonsteerable, independently driven wheels with the various initial conditions such as a position, a heading angle, and a velocity. It is shown that the performance of dynamic path-following importantly is affected by the intial conditions. Particularly, if the initial conditions become more distant from the desired path and the desired velocity become faster, the system is shown to have worse performance and small time local stable. To find the controllable and stable control for path-following with various initial configuration, we propose the path-observer which can be used for control of the stable path-following of nonholonomic mobile robot system with the various initial conditions. The proposed scheme exhibits the efficient path-following properties for nonholonomic mobile robot in any intial conditions. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for dynamic path-following tasks with the various initial conditions.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.7 no.7
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• pp.1434-1441
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• 2003

Recent technological advances in utilization and generalization of Internet have overcome some of the limitations of remote robot control range and real-time monitoring system. However, It needs Embedded system with control protocol or hardware which has avility to port the micro realtime operating system in robot control system communicate with remote controlled robot, because those system use the wireless LAM or Bluetooth as a network media. In this paper, we design and implement the wireless MODEM protocol and install it to the server system. Also, we implement a client system could control the remote robot through the server and we assure that this protocol and client/server system ate suitable for small size remote control system based on Internet.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.137-143
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• 2005

Autonomous mobile robot has an ability to navigate using both map in known environment and sensors for detecting obstacles in unknown environment. In general, autonomous mobile robot navigates by global path planning on the basis of already made map and local path planning on the basis of various kinds of sensors to avoid abrupt obstacles. This paper provides a global path planning method using self-organizing feature map which is a method among a number of neural network. The self-organizing feature map uses a randomized small valued initial weight vectors, selects the neuron whose weight vector best matches input as the winning neuron, and trains the weight vectors such that neurons within the activity bubble are move toward the input vector. On the other hand, the modified method in this research uses a predetermined initial weight vectors, gives the systematic input vector whose position best matches obstacles, and trains the weight vectors such that neurons within the activity bubble are move toward the input vector. According to simulation results one can conclude that the modified neural network is useful tool for the global path planning problem of a mobile robot.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.116-124
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• 2019

The rehabilitation training robots for treating the upper limbs of stroke patients were mainly focused on the upper proximal treatment of it, but recently studies of the distal parts of the upper limbs for rehabilitation of the hand is making some progress even though it is still a small number so far. In this paper, we present the hand robot for the rehabilitation training of stroke patients that is the fingertip contact-typed mechanism, and it has also equipped with the wrist rehabilitation unit to be worked like human hand that enables any movements through mutual cooperation by fingers while picking up or grasping objects. The robot that is presented for this purpose supports the movement of fingers with 5-DoF and the wrist with 3-DoF that moves independently, and operates with a structure that allows the joints of the wrist and fingers to be collaborated organically together to each other. Also, hereby the simulation and evaluation test on its robot mechanism are performed to ensure that fingers with 5-DoF and the wrist with 3-DoF of the serial kinematical mechanism are designed to comply with or exceed ROM for ADL.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.1525-1529
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• 2004

Most of the recently developed robots are human friendly robots which imitate an animal or human such as entertainment robot, bio-mimetic robot and humanoid robot. Interest in these robots are increasing since the social trend is focused on health, welfare, and graying. By these social backgrounds, robots become more human friendly and suitable for home or personal environment. The more bio-mimetic robots resemble living creature, the more human feels familiarity. People feel close friendship not only when they feed a pet, but also when they watch a pet having the food. Most of entertainment robots and pet robots use internal-type batteries and have a self-recharging function. Entertainment robots and pet robots with internal-type batteries are not able to operate during charging the battery. So far there have been a few robots that do not depend on a battery. However, they need a bulky energy conversion unit and a slug or foods as an energy source, which is not suitable for home or personal application. In this paper, we introduce a new bio-mimetic entertainment robot with autonomous feeding functionality, called ELIRO-1(Eating LIzard RObot version 1). The ELIRO-1 is able to find a food (a small battery), feed by itself and evacuate. We describe the design concept of the autonomous feeding mechanism of the ELIRO-1, characteristics of sub-parts of the manufactured mechanism and the control system.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.1444-1447
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• 2004

The vacuum-cleaner had made the burden of house chore lighten but the operation labour of a vacuum-cleaner had been so severe. Recently, the cleaning robot was producted to perfectly solve the cleaning labour of a house but it also was not successful because it still had a problem of mess-cleaning, which is the clean-up of big trash and the arrangement of newspapers, clothes, etc. The cleaning robot is to just vacuum dust and small trash and has no function to arrange and take away before the automatic vacuum-cleaning. For this reason, the market for the cleaning robot is not yet built up. So, we need a design method and technological algorithm of new automatic machine to solve the problem of mess-cleanup in house. In this paper, a Home Mess-Cleanup Robot(HMR), which has a practical function of the automatic mess-cleanup, is developed. It need functions of agile automatic navigation, novel manipulation system for mess-cleanup. The automatic navigation system has to be controlled for the full scanning of living room, to recognize the absolute position and orientation of the self, the precise tracking of the desired path, and to distinguish the mess object to clean-up from obstacle object to just avoid. The manipulation system, which is not needed in the vacuum-cleaning robot, must have the functions, how to distinguish big trash to clean from mess objects to arrange, how to grasp in according to the form of mess objects, how to move to the destination in according to mess objects and arrange them. Then, it should be an intelligent system so that the mess cleaning task can be autonomously performed in a wide variety of situations and environments. It need to also has the entertainment functions for the good communication between the human and HMR. Therefore, the Home Mess-cleanup Robot with Entertainmental Human Interface is developed in this paper. Finally, the good performance of the designed machine, HMR'4, is confirmed through the results of the mess clean-up and arrangement.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.407-422
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• 2014

Objective: The purpose of the study is to develop quantitative usability evaluation criteria for senior-friendly autonomous transportation robot. Background: The Republic of Korea has become the most rapidly aging society, and is anticipated to enter the post-aged society in 2026. To raise the quality of life of a senior with limited mobility and to reduce the burden of caregivers, many high-tech assistive products with information technologies are developed nowadays. The senior-friendly autonomous transportation robot is one person robot vehicle to move a senior to the destination for hospitals, nursing homes or silver town complex. With built-in navigation system and environmental monitoring censors, it automatically seeks the path to the destination and avoids collision to obstacles and pedestrians on the way. Due to the early stage of the product, few usability studies in this field have been done, mostly on general service robots to assist seniors, power wheelchairs and delivery robots. ISO and KS standards for the service robots are focused on safety. Method: Based on the reference usability index, the early draft of the usability evaluation questionnaires was developed. After small group tests and interviews, the experts modified the initial draft to the Usability Evaluation Criteria for Senior-Friendly Autonomous Transportation Robot (UEC-SFATR). Result: UEC-SFATR consisted of 4 subscales - Safety, Controllability, Efficiency and Satisfaction. All of the 4 subscales of UEC-SFATR were passed the reliability criteria by 4 groups of seniors, divided by gender and familiarity of smart-devices. Conclusion: UEC-SFATR covers wider area of user experiences of the SFATR and is a good measurement tool to help both the users and developers of the robot. Application: This study provides guide to the future product development and product competitiveness evaluation by quantifying user experiences for the SFATR.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.1299-1304
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• 2014

This paper is a study for developing an agriculture automatic hose reel of mobile robot. One of the important works in farming is pesticide spraying because it is related to the growth of crops. Therefore, we develop an automatic reel hose and mobile robot. Conducting kinematic analysis of steering performance, the mobile robot is designed to move smoothly even in a small space, and that is verified by simulation. To increase supplying accuracy of the automatic hose reel, the mobile robot use detecting tension mechanism on a hose and a device for the hose deployment. We conduct performance and on-farm evaluation. This system has been maximum speed of 2.5m/s, driving accuracy of ${\pm}0.18^{\circ}$ and driving safety speed of 2m/s. The system would solve an aging population and shortage of workforce in agriculture.