• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.570-574
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• 1993

This paper proposes a new method of estimating the position and heading angle of a mobile robot moving on a flat surface. The proposed localization method utilizes two passive beacons and a single rotating ultrasonic sensor. The passive beacons consist of two cylinders with different diameters and reflect the ultrasonic pulses coming from the sonar sensor mounted on the mobile robot. The geometric parameter set of beacon is acquired from the sonar scan data obtained at a single mobile robot location using a new data processing algorithm. Form this parameter set, the position and heading angle of the mobile robot is determined directly. The performance and validity of the proposed method are evaluated using two beacons and a single sonar sensor attached at the pan-tilt device mounted on a mobile robot, named LCAR, in our laboratory.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.183-189
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• 2010

A localization system for indoor robots is an important technology for robot navigation in a building. Our localization system imports the GPS system and consists of more than 3 satellite beacons and a receiver. Each beacon emits both an ultrasonic wave and radio frequency. The receiver in the robot computes the distance from it to the beacon by measuring the flying time difference between ultrasonic wave and radio frequency. It then computes its position with the distance information from more than 3 beacons whose positions are known. However, the distance information includes errors caused from the ultrasonic sensors; we found it to be limited to within one period of a wave (${\pm}2\;cm$ tolerance). This paper presents a method for predicting the maximum position error due to distance information errors by using Taylor expansion and singular value decomposition (SVD). The paper also proposes a measuring parameter such as sensitivity to represent the accuracy of the indoor robot localization system in determining the robot's position with regards to the distance error.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.1182-1188
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• 2010

This paper proposes a precise localization algorithm for a quickly moving mobile robot. In order to localize a mobile robot with active beacon sensors, a relatively long time is needed, since the distance to the beacon is measured using the flight time of the ultrasonic signal. The measurement time does not cause a high error rate when the mobile robot moves slowly. However, with an increase of the mobile robot's speed, the localization error becomes too high to use for accurate mobile robot navigation. Therefore, in this research into high speed mobile robot operations, instead of using two active beacons for localization an active beacon and dual compass are utilized to localize the mobile robot. This new approach resolves the high localization error caused by the speed of the mobile robot. The performance of the precise localization algorithm was verified by comparing it to the conventional method through real-world experiments.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.280-285
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• 2011

Recently, with the development of service robots and the concept of ubiquitous, the position estimation of mobile objects has received great interest. Some of the localization schemes are introduced, which provide the relative location of the moving objects subjected to accumulated errors. To implement a real time localization system, a new absolute position estimation method for a mobile robot in indoor environment is proposed. Design and implementation of the localization system comes from the usage of active beacon systems (based upon RFID technology). The active beacon system is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter. The RFID receiver gets the synchronization signal from the mobile robot and the ultra-sonic transmitter sends out the traveling signal to be used for measuring the distance. Position of a mobile robot in a three dimensional space can be calculated basically from the distance information from three beacons and the absolute position information of the beacons themselves. In some case, the mobile robot can acquire the ultrasonic signals from only one or two beacons, due to the obstacles located along the moving path. In this paper, a position estimation scheme using fewer than three sensors is developed. Also, the extended Kalman filter algorithm is applied for the improvement of position estimation accuracy of the mobile robot.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.221-226
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• 2007

A robust position-sensing system is proposed in this paper for ubiquitous mobile robots which move indoor as well as outdoor. The Differential GPS (DGPS) which has position estimation error of less than 5 m is a general solution when the mobile robots are moving outdoor, while an active beacon system (ABS) with embedded ultrasonic sensors is selected as an indoor positioning system. The switching from the outdoor to indoor or vice versa causes unstable measurements on account of the reference and algorithm changes. To minimize the switching time in the position estimation and to stabilize the measurement, a robust position-sensing system is proposed. In the system, to minimize the switching delay, the door positions are stored and updated in a database. The reliability and accuracy of the robust positioning system based on DGPS and ABS are verified through the real experiments using a mobile robot prepared for this research and demonstrated.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.242-247
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• 2008

As an absolute positioning system, iGS is designed based on ultrasonic signals whose speed can be formulated clearly in terms of time and room temperature, which is utilized for a mobile robot localization. The iGS is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter, where an RFID is designated to synchronize the transmitter and receiver of the ultrasonic signal. The traveling time of the ultrasonic signal has been used to calculate the distance between the iGS system and a beacon which is located at a pre-determined location. This paper suggests an effective operation method of iGS to estimate position of the mobile robot working in unstructured environment. To expand recognition range and to improve accuracy of the system, two strategies are proposed: utilization of beacons belonging to neighboring blocks and removal of the environment-reflected ultrasonic signals. As the results, the ubiquitous localization system based on iGS as a pseudo-satellite system has been developed successfully with a low cost, a high update rate, and relatively high precision.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.93-97
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• 2012

Most of ubiquitous computing devices such as stereo camera, ultrasonic sensor based MIT cricket system and other wireless sensor network devices are widely applied to the 2 Dimensional(2D) localization system in today. Because stereo camera cannot estimate the optimal location between moving node and beacon node in Wireless Personal Area Network(WPAN) under Non Line Of Sight(NLOS) environment, it is a great weakness point to the design of the 2D localization system in indoor environment. But the conventional 2D triangulation scheme that is adapted to the MIT cricket system cannot estimate the 3 Dimensional(3D) coordinate values for estimation of the optimal location of the moving node generally. Therefore, the 3D triangulation scheme based on the space segmentation in WPAN is suggested in this paper. The measuring data in the suggested scheme by computer simulation is compared with that of the geographic measuring data in the AutoCAD software system. The average error of coordinates values(x,y,z) of the moving node is calculated to 0.008m by the suggested scheme. From the results, it can be seen that the location correctness of the suggested scheme is very excellent for using the localization system in WPAN.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.1139-1145
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• 2008

A robust position sensing system is proposed in this paper for a ubiquitous mobile robot which moves indoors as well as outdoors. The Differential GPS (DGPS) which has a position estimation error of less than 5 m is a general solution when the mobile robot is moving outdoor, while an active beacon system (ABS) with embedded ultrasonic sensors is reliable as an indoor positioning system. The switching from the outdoor to indoor or vice versa causes unstable measurements on account of the reference coordinates and algorithm changes. To minimize the switching time in the position estimation and to stabilize the measurement, a robust position sensing system is proposed. In the system, to minimize the switching delay, the door positions are stored and updated in a database. Using the database, the approaching status of the mobile robot from indoor to outdoor or vice versa has been checked and the switching conditions are prepared before the mobile robot actually moves out or moves into the door. The reliability and accuracy of the robust positioning system based on DGPS and ABS are verified and demonstrated through the real experiments using a mobile robot prepared for this research.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.996-1001
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• 2005

Recently, with the development of service robots and with the new concept of ubiquitous world, the position estimation of mobile objects has been raised to an important problem. As pre-liminary research results, some of the localization schemes are introduced, which provide the relative location of the moving objects subjected to accumulated errors. To implement a real time localization system, a new absolute position estimation method for a mobile robot in indoor environment is proposed in this paper. Design and implementation of the localization system comes from the usage of active beacon systems (based upon RFID technology). The active beacon system is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter: 1. The RFID receiver gets the synchronization signal from the mobile robot and 2. The ultra-sonic transmitter sends out the traveling signal to be used for measuring the distance. Position of a mobile robot in a three dimensional space can be calculated basically from the distance information from. Three beacons and the absolute position information of the beacons themselves. In some case, the mobile robot can get the ultrasonic signals from only one or two beacons, because of the obstacles located along the moving path. Therefore, in this paper, as one of our dedicated contribution, the position estimation scheme with less than three sensors has been developed. Also, the extended Kalman filter algorithm is applied for the improvement of position estimation accuracy of the mobile robot.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.40-47
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• 2007

Recently, with the development of service robots and with the new concept of ubiquitous world, the position estimation of mobile objects has been raised to an important problem. As pre-liminary research results, some of the localization schemes are introduced, which provide the absolute location of the moving objects subjected to large errors. To implement a precise and convenient localization system, a new absolute position estimation method for a mobile robot in indoor environment is proposed in this paper. Design and implementation of the localization system comes from the usage of active beacon systems (based upon RFID technology). The active beacon system is composed of an RFID receiver and an ultra-sonic transmitter: 1. The RFID receiver gets the synchronization signal from the mobile robot and 2. The ultra-sonic transmitter sends out the traveling signal to be used for measuring the distance. Position of a mobile robot in a three dimensional space can be calculated basically from the distance information from three beacons and the absolute position information of the beacons themselves. Since it is not easy to install the beacons at a specific position precisely, there exists a large localization error and the installation time takes long. To overcome these problems, and provide a precise and convenient localization system, a new auto calibration algorithm is developed in this paper. Also the extended Kalman filter has been adopted for improving the localization accuracy during the mobile robot navigation. The localization accuracy improvement through the proposed auto calibration algorithm and the extended Kalman filter has been demonstrated by the real experiments.