• Journal of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.235-242
• /
• 2021

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which were used for military purposes, are gradually expanding their application fields under the influence of electrification and digitalization. Starting from the field of aerial imaging and Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) mission, nowadays the possibility of Urban Air Mobility (UAM), which transports passengers and cargo with drones, is widely under discussion. In order to occupy the rapidly growing global unmanned aerial vehicle market in advance, it is necessary to secure core technologies and develop key UAVs components based on the new technologies. In the navigation field, it is necessary to secure a precise position with guaranteed reliability and continuity, unrelated to the operating environments. The reliability and continuity should be secured in the algorithm level and in the H/W component levels also. In order to achieve this technical goal, the Ministry of Science and ICT has launched the 'Unmanned Vehicle Core Technology Research and Development Program' in 2019 to support the R&D on the unmanned vehicle technologies. In this paper, authors introduce the unmanned vehicle core technology research and development program to the related researchers. The authors summarize the backgrounds of the program and show the technological tasks and objectives on the sub-programs in the unmanned vehicle navigation program. We present the program schedules especially focused on the test and evaluation of the developed technologies and components.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.117-129
• /
• 2024

This paper introduces collective navigation through a narrow gap using a curriculum-based deep reinforcement learning algorithm for a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Collective navigation in complex environments is essential for various applications such as search and rescue, environment monitoring and military tasks operations. Conventional methods, which are easily interpretable from an engineering perspective, divide the navigation tasks into mapping, planning, and control; however, they struggle with increased latency and unmodeled environmental factors. Recently, learning-based methods have addressed these problems by employing the end-to-end framework with neural networks. Nonetheless, most existing learning-based approaches face challenges in complex scenarios particularly for navigating through a narrow gap or when a leader or informed UAV is unavailable. Our approach uses the information of a certain number of nearest neighboring UAVs and incorporates a task-specific curriculum to reduce learning time and train a robust model. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified through an ablation study and quantitative metrics. Simulation results demonstrate that our approach outperforms existing methods.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
• /
• v.34 no.4
• /
• pp.278-285
• /
• 2009

Navigation system is applied in variety of fields including the simple location positioning, autopilot navigation of unmanned robot tractor, autonomous guidance systems for agricultural vehicles, construction of large field works that require high precision and map making process. Particularly utilization of GPS (Global Positioning System) is very common in the present navigation system. This study introduces a navigation system for autonomous field robot that travels to the pre-input path using GPS information. Performance of the GPS- based navigation is highly depended on its receiving rate because GPS receivers do not acquire any navigation information in the period between the refresh intervals. So this study presents an algorithm that improves an accuracy of the navigation by estimation the positional information during the blind period of a low rate GPS receiver. In fact the algorithm calculated the robot's heading in a 50 Hz rate, so the blind period of an 1 Hz GPS receiver is extensively covered. Consequently implementation of the algorithm to the GPS based navigation showed an improvement in guidance accuracy. The conventional field robot directly carried an expensive control computer and sensors onboard, therefore the miniaturization and weight reduction of the robot was limited. In this paper, the field robot carried only communication equipments such as GPS module, normal RC receiver, and bluetooth modem. This enabled the field robot to be built in an economic cost and miniature size.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.289-295
• /
• 2019

Maritime back-up navigation system in port approach requires a horizontal accuracy of 10 meters in IALA (International Association of Lighthouse Authorities) recommendations. eLoran which is a best back-up navigation system that satisfies accuracy requirement has poor navigation performance depending signal environments. Especially, noise caused by multipath and electronic devices around eLoran antenna affects navigation performance. In this paper, Ship based Navigation Back-up system using UAV on Interference is designed to satisfy horizontal accuracy requirement. To improve the eLoran signal environment, UAVs are equipped with camera, IMU sensor and eLoran antenna and receivers. This proposed system is designed to receive eLoran signal through UAV-based receiver and control UAV's position and attitude within Landmark around area. The ship-based positioning using eLoran signal, vision and attitude information received from UAV satisfy resilient and robust navigation requirements.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.158-163
• /
• 2013

The fusion of the GPS (Global Positioning System) and DR (Dead Reckoning) is widely used for position and latitude estimation of vehicles such as a mobile robot, aerial vehicle and marine vehicle. Among the many types of aerial vehicles, grater focus is given on the quad-rotor and accuracy of the position information is becoming more important. In order to exactly estimate the position information, we propose the fusion method of GPS and Gyroscope sensor using the DEKF (Dual Extended Kalman Filter). The DEKF has an advantage of simultaneously estimating state value and a parameter of dynamical system. It can also be used even if state value is not available. In order to analyze the performance of DEKF, the computer simulation for estimating the position, the velocity and the angle in a circle trajectory of quad-rotor was done. As it can be seen from the simulation results using own proposed DEKF instead of EKF on own fusion method in the navigation of a quad-rotor gave better performance values.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.35 no.3
• /
• pp.235-241
• /
• 2011

The shuttle that currently connects Busan New Port to the logistics companies in the Hinterland has the following companies: first, resources are consumed redundantly as each logistics company has independent transport vehicles. Second, the companies are not taking advantage of geographical merits of clustered complexes because different vehicles are used each time due to irregular schedules. In this respect, this study had the following purposes to realize these solutions: first, heuristic approach was made for operation scheduling and real-time operating rules to configure the best possible dynamic plan. Second, the reduction of consumption of resources with the shuttle and the efficiency were examined through a simulation of pooling and dual cycling applied to logistics companies' shipping plans.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
• /
• 2000.11a
• /
• pp.207-217
• /
• 2000

In this paper, we describe an image processing algorithm which is able to recognize the road lane. This algorithm performs to recognize the interrelation between AGV and the other vehicle. We experimented on AGV driving test with color CCD camera which is setup on the top of vehicle and acquires the digital signal. This paper is composed of two parts. One is image preprocessing part to measure the condition of the lane and vehicle. This finds the information of lines using RGB ratio cutting algorithm, the edge detection and Hough transform. The other obtains the situation of other vehicles using the image processing and viewport. At first, 2 dimension image information derived from vision sensor is interpreted to the 3 dimension information by the angle and position of the CCD camera. Through these processes, if vehicle knows the driving conditions which are angle, distance error and real position of other vehicles, we should calculate the reference steering angle.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 1999.07b
• /
• pp.674-676
• /
• 1999

At present electrical and electronic technologies is rapidly improved, and they have formed their market widely. New technologies such as traffic signal system, navigation system and unmanned vehicle are connected with transportation field. Among these advanced technologies, the Image Processing Technology has been used for the astro-navigation, medicine, military field and so forth. Recently The Image Processing Technologies are widely applied to traffic enforcement system for signal, speed limit and HOV lane. In this study we developed the advanced enforcement system for over limit(overweight)vehicles using Image Processing System.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.17 no.6
• /
• pp.513-520
• /
• 2011

This paper presents the motion planning of robotic vehicles for the path tracking and the obstacle avoidance. To follow the given path, the vehicle moves through the turning radius obtained through the pure pursuit method, which is a geometric path tracking method. In this paper, we assume that the vehicle is equipped with a 2D laser scanner, allowing it to avoid obstacles within its sensing range. The turning radius for avoiding the obstacle, which is inversely proportional to the virtual force, is then calculated. Therefore, these two kinds of the turning radius are used to generate the steering angle for the front wheel of the vehicle. And the vehicle reduces the velocity when it meets the obstacle or the large steering angle using the potentials of obstacle points and the steering angle. Thus the motion planning of the vehicle is done by planning the steering angle for the front wheels and the velocity. Finally, the performance of the proposed method is tested through simulation.

• Journal of The Institute of Information and Telecommunication Facilities Engineering
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.92-101
• /
• 2010

Energy efficiency and safe mobility are the two key constituents of the future automobile. The technologies that enable these features are now heavily dependent upon information and communication technology rather than traditional auto-mechanical technology. This paper presents an exploratory project 'Smart&Green Vehicle Project' at Western Michigan University which is to improve the geographical location accuracy of vehicles and to study various applications of making such location data available. Global Positioning System (GPS), Inertial Navigation System (INS), Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) technology, and data fusion among these technologies are investigated. Testing and evaluation is done on systems which will gather vehicular positioning data during GPS signal loss. Vehicles in urban settings do not acquire accurate positioning data from GPS alone; therefore there is a need for exploration into technology that can assist GPS in urban settings. The goal of this project is to improve the accuracy of positioning data during a loss of GPS signal. Controlled experiments are performed to gather data which aided in assessing the feasibility of these technologies for use in vehicular platforms.