• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.1775-1780
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• 2005

One of the most important factors so that mobile objects can achieve their purpose is the information about their positions. In this paper, we propose an improved beacon system, to which ultrasonic sensors are attached, for the indoor localization of mobile objects. We have researched so that it can cover the wider space and estimate more accurate positions than the existent beacon systems. The existent beacon systems have the constraint that one beacon cannot cover wide area since ultrasonic sensors have limits in the angle of signal (beam-angle) on which their signal strength depends. Hence, we used the active beacon which consists of a pan-tilt mechanism and a beacon module. The active beacon system can always aim at mobile objects in order to transmit the strongest signal of the ultrasonic sensors into the objects using the pan-tilt mechanism. In addition, this system is inexpensive because it can decrease the number of beacons by about a half of the beacons of the existent system. Finally, the results show what is the difference between the active beacon system and existent beacon systems, and how accurate it is.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.293-299
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• 2010

The multiple block localization method in a wide area for multiple robots using iGS is proposed in this paper. The iGS is developed for the indoor global localization using ultrasonic and RF sensors. To measure the distance between a mobile robot and a beacon, the tag on the mobile robot wakes up one beacon to send out the ultrasonic signal and measures the traveling time from the beacon to the mobile robot. As the number of robots is increased, the sampling time of localization also becomes longer. Note that only one robot can localize its own position calling beacons one by one during each of the sampling interval. This is a severe constraint for the localization of multiple robots in a wide area. This paper proposes an efficient localization algorithm for the multiple robots in a wide area which can be divided into multiple blocks. For a given block, a master beacon is designated to synchronize robots. By the access of the synchronization signal, each beacon in the selected group sends out an ultrasonic signal. When the robots in the block receive the ultrasonic signal, they can calculate their own locations based on the distances to the beacons, which are obtained by the multiplication of flight time and velocity of the ultrasonic signal. The efficiency of the algorithm is verified through the real experiments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.1040-1044
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• 2005

This paper presents a method for the robot localization and calibration using the ultrasonic and the radio frequency. The distance between the receiver and a beacon can be computed by using the difference between times of flight. The presented method uses the gradient of the maximum amplitude of the ultrasonic in order to measure the time of flight precisely. The measured three distances between the receiver and the beacon are used to compute the robot position by the direct inverse method and the iterated least square approximation method. This paper is defined the calibration as the problem to find the location of 3 beacons and 3 robots, and presents 3 methods for it and found the 2B2R method as the best among them.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1155-1160
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• 2007

This paper presents position error for the robot localization system using the ultrasonic wave. The distance between the receiver and a beacon can be computed by using the difference between times of flight. The distance information measured by ultrasonic wave has errors. The position is calculated by distances, and this error is caused by distance errors. The position error is different from receiver¡s position. And the position is also calculated by beacon location. This paper calculates worst case position error within measuring area, and finds beacons location to reduce the position error.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.391-407
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• 2019

Tracking the location (position) of a surface or underwater marine vehicle is important as part of guidance and navigation. While the Global Positioning System (GPS) works well in an open sea environment but its use is limited whenever testing scaled-down models of such vehicles in the laboratory environment. This paper presents the design, development and implementation of a low energy ultrasonic augmented single beacon-based localization technique suitable for such requirements. The strategy consists of applying Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to achieve location tracking from basic dynamic distance measurements of the moving model from a fixed beacon, while on-board motion sensor measures heading angle and velocity. Iterative application of the Extended Kalman Filter yields x and y co-ordinate positions of the moving model. Tests performed on a free-running ship model in a wave basin facility of dimension 30 m by 30 m by 3 m water depth validate the proposed model. The test results show quick convergence with an error of few centimeters in the estimated position of the ship model. The proposed technique has application in the real field scenario by replacing the ultrasonic sensor with industrial grade long range acoustic modem. As compared with the existing systems such as LBL, SBL, USBL and others localization techniques, the proposed technique can save deployment cost and also cut the cost on number of acoustic modems involved.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.433-439
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• 2010

This paper proposes a beacon color code scheduling algorithm for the localization of multiple robots in a multi-block workspace. With the developments of intelligent robotics and ubiquitous technology, service robots are applicable for the wide area such as airports and train stations where multiple indoor GPS systems are required for the localization of the mobile robots. Indoor localization schemes using ultrasonic sensors have been widely studied due to its cheap price and high accuracy. However, ultrasonic sensors have some shortages of short transmission range and interferences with other ultrasonic signals. In order to use multiple robots in wide workspace concurrently, it is necessary to resolve the interference problem among the multiple robots in the localization process. This paper proposes an indoor localization system for concurrent multiple robots localization in a wide service area which is divided into multi-block for the reliable sensor operation. The beacon color code scheduling algorithm is developed to avoid the signal interferences and to achieve efficient localization with high accuracy and short sampling time. The performance of the proposed localization system is verified through the simulations and the real experiments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.608-614
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• 2008

This paper describes a location tracking system to guide landing process of an Unmanned Helicopter(UMH) exploiting MIT Cricket nodes. For automatic landing of a UMH, a precise positioning system is indispensable. However, GPS(Global Positioning System) is inadequate for tracking the three dimensional position of a UMH because of large positioning errors. The Cricket systems use Time-Difference-of-Arrival(TDoA) method with ultrasonic and RF(Radio Frequency) signals to measure distances. They operate in passive mode in that a listener attached to a moving device receives distance signals from several beacons located at fixed points on ground. Inevitably, this passive type of implementation causes large disturbances in measuring distances between beacons and the listener due to wind blow from propeller and turbulence of UMH body. To cope with this problem, we proposed active type of implementation for positioning a UMH. In this implementation, a beacon is set up at UMH body and four listeners are located at ground area at least where the UMH will land. A pair of Ultrasonic and RF signals from the beacon arrives at several listeners to calculate the position of the UMH. The distance signals among listeners are synchronized with a counter value appended to each distance signals from the beacon.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.734-741
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• 2009

A new localization algorithm is proposed for a fast moving mobile robot, which utilizes only one beacon and the global features of the differential-driving mobile robot. It takes a relatively long time to localize a mobile robot with active beacon sensors since the distance to the beacon is measured by the traveling time of the ultrasonic signal. When the mobile robot is moving slowly the measurement time does not yield a high error. At a higher mobile robot speed, however, the localization error becomes too large to locate the mobile robot. Therefore, in high-speed mobile robot operations, instead of using two or more active beacons for localization, only one active beacon and the global features of the mobile robot are used to localize the mobile robot in this research. The two global features are the radius and center of the rotational motion for the differential-driving mobile robot which generally describe motion of the mobile robot and are used for the trace prediction of the mobile robot. In high speed operations the localizer finds an intersection point of this predicted trace and a circle which is centered at the beacon and has the radius of the distance between the mobile robot and the beacon. This new approach resolves the large localization error caused by the high speed of the mobile robot. The performance of the new localization algorithm has been verified through the experiments with a high-speed mobile robot.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.341-348
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• 2013

A location estimation algorithm based on the sea-surface beacon is proposed in this paper. The beacon is utilized to provide ultrasonic signals to the underwater vehicles around the beacon to estimate precise position of underwater vehicles (ROV, AUV, Diver robot), which is named as USBL (Ultra Short Baseline) system. It utilizes GPS and INS data for estimating its position and adopts DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) de-noising filter and UKF (Unscented KALMAN Filter) elaborating the position estimation. The beacon system aims at estimating the precise position of underwater vehicle by using USBL to receive the tracking signals. The most important one for the precise position estimation of underwater vehicle is estimating the position of the beacon system precisely. Since the beacon is on the sea-waves, the received GPS signals are noisy and unstable most of times. Therefore, the INS data (gyroscope sensor, accelerometer, magnetic compass) are obtained at the beacon on the sea-surface to compensate for the inaccuracy of the GPS data. The noises in the acceleration data from INS data are reduced by using DWT de-noising filter in this research. Finally the UKF localization system is proposed in this paper and the system performance is verified by real experiments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.371-372
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• 2007