• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.887-893
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• 2009

In this paper, a mask-panel alignment robot system is considered for IT industry applications. Two kinds of solutions are suggested which are required in constructing a control system for the alignment robot with actuation redundancy. First, the kinematic solution for the 4PPR parallel positioning mechanism is formulated for an arbitrary initial posture, which relates the mask-panel misalignment in the task space and the desired actuator displacements in the joint space. Secondly, in order to increase the stiffness of the control motion and also to avoid the mechanical lock which may happen due to the redundant actuation, a new synchronous control method is proposed which has the merit of coordinating joint control motions while not losing individual joint control performance. In addition, the engineering process to develop a visual alignment robot system is described with the results of experimental setup and GUI software. Finally, the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed alignment system control methodology and how much beneficial it will be in real industrial applications.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.251-258
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• 2011

Applying face alignment after face detection exerts a heavy influence on face recognition. Many researchers have recently investigated face alignment using databases collected from images taken at close distances and with low magnification. However, in the cases of home-service robots, captured images generally are of low resolution and low quality. Therefore, previous face alignment research, such as eye detection, is not appropriate for robot environments. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a new and effective approach in the alignment of small and blurred faces. We propose a face alignment method using the confidence value of Real-AdaBoost with a modified census transform feature. We also evaluate the face recognition system to compare the proposed face alignment module with those of other systems. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a high recognition rate, higher than face alignment methods using a manually-marked eye position.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Information Technology Applications Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.91-97
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• 2005

Bones are dynamic structures, being supported by muscles, tendons, and ligaments. When some or all the structures are disturbed i.e. in fractures, the alignment of the bone in respect to the rest of the body is deranged. This gives rise to axial as well as rotational deformity in three dimensional planes. The correct alignment and position of the long bones are to be maintained to heal the bone in the best possible anatomical and functional position. The objective of this research is to address the problems in the current practice involving surgeon, assistant, fluoroscopy and crude mechanical means and to see if a robotic solution exists to solve the problems of manipulating and reducing long bone fractures. This paper presents various design aspects of the proposed surgeon-instructed, image-guided and robotic system including the system design specification, robot design and analysis, motion control and implementation, and x-ray image processing and incorporation in CAD environment.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Information Technology Applications Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.229-232
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• 2005

In this paper, an image-based "approach-align -grasp" visual servo control design is proposed for the problem of object grasping, which is based on the binocular stand-alone system. The basic idea consists of considering a vision system as a specific sensor dedicated a task and included in a control servo loop, and we perform automatic grasping follows the classical approach of splitting the task into preparation and execution stages. During the execution stage, once the image-based control modeling is established, the control task can be performed automatically. The proposed visual servoing control scheme ensures the convergence of the image-features to desired trajectories by using the Jacobian matrix, which is proved by the Lyapunov stability theory. And we also stress the importance of projective invariant object/gripper alignment. The alignment between two solids in 3-D projective space can be represented with view-invariant, more precisely; it can be easily mapped into an image set-point without any knowledge about the camera parameters. The main feature of this method is that the accuracy associated with the task to be performed is not affected by discrepancies between the Euclidean setups at preparation and at task execution stages. Then according to the projective alignment, the set point can be computed. The robot gripper will move to the desired position with the image-based control law. In this paper we adopt a constant Jacobian online. Such method describe herein integrate vision system, robotics and automatic control to achieve its goal, it overcomes disadvantages of discrepancies between the different Euclidean setups and proposes control law in binocular-stand vision case. The experimental simulation shows that such image-based approach is effective in performing the precise alignment between the robot end-effector and the object.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.1233-1240
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• 2010

In the flat panel display and semiconductor industries, the visual alignment system is considered as a core technology which determines the productivity of a manufacturing line. It consists of the vision system to extract the centroids of alignment marks and the stage control system to compensate the alignment error. In this paper, we develop a Kalman filter algorithm to estimate the alignment mark postures and propose a coarse-fine alignment control method which utilizes both original fine images and reduced coarse ones in the visual feedback. The error compensation trajectory for the distributed joint servos of the alignment stage is generated in terms of the inverse kinematic solution for the misalignment in task space. In constructing the estimation algorithm, the equation of motion for the alignment marks is given by using the forward kinematics of alignment stage. Secondly, the measurements for the alignment mark centroids are obtained from the reduced images by applying the geometric template matching. As a result, the proposed Kalman filter based coarse-fine alignment control method enables a considerable reduction of alignment time.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.273-277
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• 2003

A general process of electronic assembly is composed of a series of geometric alignments and bonding/screwing processes. After assembly, the function is tested in a following process of inspection. However, assembly of micro-optic devices requires both processes to be performed in equipment. Coarse geometric alignment is made by using vision and optical function is improved by the following fine motion based on feedback of tunable laser interferometer. The general system is composed of a precision robot system for 3D assembly, a 3D vision guided system for geometric alignment and an optical feedback system with a tunable laser. In this study, we propose a new fast alignment algorithm of micro-optic devices for both of visual and optical alignments. The main goal is to find a fastest alignment process and algorithms with state-of-the-art technology. We propose a new approach with an optimal sequence of processes, a visual alignment algorithm and a search algorithm for an optimal optical alignment. A system is designed to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.65-69
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• 2015

A vision-based blank alignment unit for a press automation line is introduced in this paper. A press is a machine tool that changes the shape of a blank by applying pressure and is widely used in industries requiring mass production. In traditional press automation lines, a mechanical centering unit, which consists of guides and ball bearings, is employed to align a blank before a robot inserts it into the press. However it can only align limited sized and shaped of blanks. Moreover it cannot be applied to a process where more than two blanks are simultaneously inserted. To overcome these problems, we developed a press centering unit by means of vision sensors for press automation lines. The specification of the vision system is determined by considering information of the blank and the required accuracy. A vision application S/W with pattern recognition, camera calibration and monitoring functions is designed to successfully detect multiple blanks. Through real experiments with an industrial robot, we validated that the proposed system was able to align various sizes and shapes of blanks, and successfully detect more than two blanks which were simultaneously inserted.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.350-356
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• 2020

Workers have been replaced by mobile manipulators for factory automation in recent years. One of the typical tasks for automation is that a mobile manipulator moves to a target location and picks and places an object on the worktable. However, due to the pose estimation error of the mobile platform, the robot cannot reach the exact target position, which prevents the manipulator from being able to accurately pick and place the object on the worktable. In this study, we developed an automatic alignment system using a low-cost camera mounted on the end-effector of a collaborative robot. Camera calibration and pose estimation methods were also proposed for the automatic alignment system. This algorithm uses a markerboard composed of markers to calibrate the camera and then precisely estimate the camera pose. Experimental results demonstrate that the mobile manipulator can perform successful pick and place tasks on various conditions.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.559-563
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• 2000

In this paper we describe a method for aligning a robot gripper using image information. The region of gripper is represented from HSI color model that has major advantage of brightness independence. In order to extract the feature points for vision based position control, we find the corners of gripper shape using polygonal approximation method which determines the segment size and curvature of each points. We apply the vision based scheme to the task of alignment of gripper to reach the desired position by 2 RGB cameras. Experiments are carried out to exhibit the effectiveness of vision based control using feature points from polygonal approximation of gripper.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2011.07a
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• pp.1926-1927
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• 2011

In this paper, an alignment method between a transporter and a stowage is presented for the automation of loading and unloading operations in the mobile harbor system. The principle of linetracer is utilized for the automatic alignment of transporter and stowage, and the effectiveness of the alignment method is proved by a simulated experiment using mobile robot.