• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.141-149
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• 2016

In this technical note, the issues and challenges for the launch and recovery systems (LARS) and related techniques for the operation of an underwater robot from a manned platform are considered. Various types of LARS fitted to specific manned platforms, surface or sub-surface, are surveyed and categorized. The current UUV launch and recovery systems from surface ships and submarines utilize time consuming processes. As underwater robot technologies evolve and their roles are defined, safe and effective launch and recovery methods should be developed capable of reliable and efficient operations, particularly at a high sea state. To improve the existing underwater robot capabilities, LARS technology maturation is required in the near term, leading to the ability to incorporate autonomous LARS for an underwater robot on a manned platform. In the near term, particular emphasis should be placed on UUV LARS, which are surface ship based, with submarine based systems in the long term. Furthermore, for a dedicated LARS ship, independent of the existing host ship type, particular emphasis should be given to fully utilizing the capabilities of underwater robots.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.177-185
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• 2010

In this paper, a wall climbing robot, called LAVAR, is developed, which is using an impeller for adhering. The adhesion mechanism of the robot consists of an impeller and two-layered suction seals which provide sufficient adhesion force for the robot body on the non smooth vertical wall and horizontal ceiling. The robot uses two driving-wheels and one ball-caster to maneuver the wall surface. A suspension mechanism is also used to overcome the obstacles on the wall surface. For its design, the whole adhering mechanism is analyzed and the control system is built up based on this analysis. The performances of the robot are experimentally verified on the vertical and horizontal flat surfaces.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.420-426
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• 2001

In this paper, we introduce a case study of developing a miniature humanoid robot that has 16 degrees of freedom and is able to perform statically stable walking. The developed humanoid robot is 37cm tall and weighs 1,200g. RC servo motors are used as actuators. The robot can walk forward and turn to any direction on an even surface. It equipped with a small digital camera, so it can transmit vision data to a remote host computer via wireless modem. The robot can be operated in two modes: One is a remote-controlled mode, in which the robot behaves according to the command given by a human operator through the user-interface program running on a remote host computer, the other is a stand-alone mode, in which the robot behaves autonomously according the pre-programmed strategy. The user-interface program also contains a robot graphic simulator that is used to produce and verify the robot\`s gait motion. In our walking algorithm, the ankle joint is mainly used for balancing the robot. The experimental results shows that the developed robot can perform statically stable walking on an even surface.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1995.11a
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• pp.587-589
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• 1995

The safe navigation of a mobile robot requires the recognition of the environment in terms of vision processing. To be guided in the given path, the robot should acquire the information about where the wall and corridor are located. Also unexpected obstacles should be detected as rapid as possible for the safe obstacle avoidance. In the paper, we assume that the mobile robot should be navigated in the flat surface. In terms of this assumption we simplify the correspondence problem by the free navigation surface and matching features in that coordinate system. Basically, the vision processing system adopts line segment of edge as the feature. The extracted line segments of edge out of both image are matched in the free nevigation surface. According to the matching result, each line segment is labeled by the attributes regarding obstacle and free surface and the 3D shape of obstacle is interpreted. This proposed vision processing method is verified in terms of various simulations and experimentation using real images.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1996.07b
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• pp.1228-1230
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• 1996

A neural network(NN) mechanism is proposed to modify the gait of a biped robot that walks on sloping surface using sensory inputs. The robot starts walking on a surface with no priori knowledge of the inclination of the surface. By accumulating experience during walking, the robot improves its walking gait and finally forms a gait that is adapted to the surface inclination. A neural controller is proposed to control the gait which has 72 reciprocally inhibited and excited neurons. PI control is used for position control, and the neurons are trained by a reinforcement learning mechanism. Experiments of static gait learning and pseudo dynamic learning are performed to show the validity of the proposed reinforcement learning mechanism.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.14-22
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• 2010

Recently researches on the window cleaning robot are being conducted actively. Moving mechanismsof these window cleaning robots are divided into two categories, which are towed type and walking type. Towed type is focused on fast cleaning on the flat surface of building and walking type has priority on cleaning task on relatively complex surface with overcoming obstacles. Currently commercialized towed type window cleaning robot has weakness that it is hard to adhere closely with the wall and easy to be affected by wind. In case of walking type it has the problem that the position errors are continuously accumulated during motion. In this paper, we propose new towed and walking type mechanism which can compensate previous weaknesses. After that we estimate the performance of each proposed mechanism by simulation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.437-442
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• 2014

Recently, the needs for the development and application of the micro marine robot (MMR) which has the advantages in terms of size and cost are increasing. However, the basis is very short in the domestic. While the obstacle avoidance sonar (OAS) which was optimized in terms of size and performance and has the ability of 4-directional detection was developed for the obstacle avoidance of the micro surface robot (MSR) fortunately, the problem that the detection performance is degraded according to the shape of the obstacle because of using the fixed sonar-beam with the limited beam width and detection range exists. To solve this problem, the MSR mechanism that implements the rotating sonar-beam using the spur gear and the servo motor is proposed in this paper. To verify the performance of the proposed mechanism, the wall-tracking of the MSR is considered and the comparison and analysis in term of detection performance and actuation command is performed with conventional fixed sonar-beam. The test results show the validity of the proposed mechanism.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.114-123
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• 2017

This paper introduces a novel obstacle-climbing robot that moves on the facade of buildings and its climbing mechanism. A winch system set on the top of the building makes the vertical motion of the robot while it climbs obstacles that protrude from the wall surface. The obstacle-climbing robot suggested in this research is composed of a main platform and three modular climbing units. Various sensors installed on each climbing unit detect the obstacles, and the robot controller coordinates the three units and the winch to climb the obstacles using the obstacle-climbing mechanism. To evaluate the performance of the developed robot prototype, a test bed, which consists of an artificial wall and an obstacle, was manufactured. The obstacle size and the time required to climb the obstacle were selected as the performance indices, and extensive experiments were carried out. As a result, it was confirmed that the obstacle-climbing robot can climb various-sized obstacles with a reasonable speed while it moves on the wall surface.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.243-250
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• 2012

This paper proposes a 3D map-building algorithm using one LRF (Laser Range Finder) while a mobile robot is navigating on the slanted surface. There are several researches on 3D map buildings using the LRF. However most of them are performing the map building only on the flat surface. While a mobile robot is moving on the slanted surface, the view angle of LRF is dynamically changing, which makes it very difficult to build the 3D map using encoder data. To cope with this dynamic change of the view angle in build 3D map, IMU and balance filters are fused to correct the unstable encoder data in this research. Through the real navigation experiments, it is verified that the fusion of multiple sensors are properly performed to correct the slope angle of the slanted surface. The effectiveness of the balance filter are also checked through the hill climbing navigations.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.138-142
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• 2018

The marine industry is rapidly developing as a result of the increase in various needs in the marine environment. In addition, accidents involving ship fires and explosions and the resulting casualties are increasing. Generally, manpower and safety problems exist in fire fighting. A fire fighter in the form of an autonomous surface robot would be ideal for marine fire safety, because it has no manpower and safety problems. Therefore, an autonomous surface robot with the abilities of fire recognition and tracking, nozzle selection, position and attitude control, and fire fighting was developed and is discussed in this paper. The test and evaluation results of this robot showed the possibility of real-size applications and the need for additional studies.