• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.3373-3389
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• 2022

Exploration of mobile robot without prior data about environments is a fundamental problem during the SLAM processes. In this work, we propose improved version of previous Rmap algorithm by modifying its Exploration submodule. Despite the previous Rmap's performance which significantly reduces the overhead of the grid map, its exploration module costs a lot because of its rectangle following algorithm. To prevent that, we propose a new Rmap+ algorithm for autonomous path planning of mobile robot to explore an unknown environment. The algorithm bases on paired frontiers. To navigate and extend an exploration area of mobile robot, the Rmap+ utilizes the inner and outer frontiers. In each exploration round, the mobile robot using the sensor range determines the frontiers. Then robot periodically changes the range of sensor and generates inner pairs of frontiers. After calculating the length of each frontiers' and its corresponding pairs, the Rmap+ selects the goal point to navigate the robot. The experimental results represent efficiency and applicability on exploration time and distance, i.e., to complete the whole exploration, the path distance decreased from 15% to 69%, as well as the robot decreased the time consumption from 12% to 86% than previous algorithms.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.250-255
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• 2005

For navigation of a service robot, mapping and localization are very important. To estimate the robot pose, the map of the environment is required and it can be built by exploration or SLAM. Exploration is the fundamental task of guiding a robot autonomously during mapping such that it covers the entire environment with its sensors. In this paper, an efficient exploration scheme based on the position probability of the end nodes of a topological map is proposed. In this scheme, a topological map is constructed in real time using the thinning-based approach. The robot then updates the position probability of each end node maintaining its position at the current location based on the Bayesian update rule using the range data. From this probability, the robot can determine whether or not it needs to visit the specific end node to examine the environment around this node. Various experiments show that the proposed exploration scheme can perform exploration more efficiently than other schemes in that, in most cases, exploration for the entire environment can be completed without directly visiting everywhere in the environment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.1232-1239
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• 2009

This paper proposes an exploration strategy to efficiently find a specific place in large unknown environments with wall-following based path planning. Many exploration methods proposed so far showed good performance but they focused only on efficient planning for modeling unknown environments. Therefore, to successfully accomplish the room finding task, two additional requirements should be considered. First, suitable path-planning is needed to recognize the room number. Most conventional exploration schemes used the gradient method to extract the optimal path. In these schemes, the paths are extracted in the middle of the free space which is usually far from the wall. If the robot follows such a path, it is not likely to recognize the room number written on the wall because room numbers are usually too small to be recognized by camera image from a distance. Second, the behavior which re-explores the explored area is needed. Even though the robot completes exploration, it is possible that some rooms are not registered in the constructed map for some reasons such as poor recognition performance, occlusion by a human and so on. With this scheme, the robot does not have to visit and model the whole environment. This proposed method is very simple but it guarantees that the robot can find a specific room in most cases. The proposed exploration strategy was verified by various experiments.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.321-338
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• 2008

This paper presents a Modified Multiple Depth First Search algorithm for the exploration of the indoor environments occupied with obstacles in random distribution. The proposed algorithm was designed and implemented to employ one or a team of Khepera II mini robots for the exploration process. In case of multi-robots, the BlueCore2 External Bluetooth module was used to establish wireless networks with one master robot and one up to three slaves. Messages are sent and received via the module's Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) interface. Real exploration experiments were performed using locally developed teleworkbench with various autonomy features. In addition, computer simulation tool was also developed to simulate the exploration experiments with one master robot and one up to ten slaves. Computer simulations were in good agreement with the real experiments for the considered cases of one to one up to three networks. Results of the MMDFS for single robot exhibited 46% reduction in the needed number of steps for exploring environments with obstacles in comparison with other algorithms, namely the Ants algorithm and the original MDFS algorithm. This reduction reaches 71% whenever exploring open areas. Finally, results performed using multi-robots exhibited more reduction in the needed number of exploration steps.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.487-495
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• 2023

This paper presents a method for autonomous exploration of indoor environments using a 2-dimensional Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) scanner. The proposed frontier-based exploration method considers navigability from the current robot position to extracted frontier targets. An approach to constructing the point cloud grid map that accurately reflects the occupancy probability of glass obstacles is proposed, enabling identification of safe frontier grids on the safety grid map calculated from the point cloud grid map. Navigability, indicating whether the robot can successfully navigate to each frontier target, is calculated by applying the skeletonization-informed rapidly exploring random tree algorithm to the safety grid map. While conventional exploration approaches have focused on frontier detection and target position/direction decision, the proposed method discusses a safe navigation approach for the overall exploration process until the completion of mapping. Real-world experiments have been conducted to verify that the proposed method leads the robot to avoid glass obstacles and safely navigate the entire environment, constructing the point cloud map and calculating the navigability with low computing time deviation.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.13-24
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• 2008

The multi robot operation technique has emerged as one of the most important research subjects that focus on minimizing redundancy in space exploration and maximizing the efficiency of operation. For an efficient operation of the multi robot systems, the movement of each Single robot in the multi robot systems should be properly observed and controlled. This paper suggests Multi Robot Management System to minimize redundancy in space exploration by assigning exploration space to each robot efficiently to take advantage of the RFID. Also, this paper has suggested fault tolerance technique that detects disable Single robot and substitute it by activated Single robot in order to ensure overall exploration and improve efficiency of exploration. Proposed system overcomes previous fault that it is difficult for central server to detect exact position of robot by using RFID system and Home Robot. Designated Home robot manages each Single robot efficiently and assigns the best suited space to Single robot by using RFID Tag Information. Proposed multi robot management system uses RFID for space assignment, Localization and Mapping efficiently and not only maximizes the efficiency of operation, but also ensures reliability by supporting fault-tolerance, compared with Single robot system. Also, through simulation, this paper proves efficiency of spending time and redundancy rates between multi robot management applied by proposed system and not applied by proposed system.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.251-261
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• 2010

In this paper, we introduce an internal pipeline exploration of an in-pipe robot, based on the landmark recognition system. The fittings of pipelines such as elbows and branches are used as the landmarks. The robot recognizes the landmarks with a vision system by using the shadows of the elements, which are generated by the specially designed illuminator on the robot. By using a simple image-processing, the robot can easily detect and distinguish these landmarks while recognizing the direction of the pipeline path. Simultaneously, all information for exploration is continuously recorded and used to reconstruct the map of the pipelines. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by real experiments using the in-pipe robot MRINSPECT V for moving inside of the miniature urban 8-inch gas pipeline structure.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.355-360
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• 2009

This paper presents mobile robot based down-scale mineral resources exploration test system for the USN (Ubiquitous Sensor Network) based exploration. The system emulates the actual exploration environment. Underneath the metal free test plate, a metal object is attached. A magneto-meter mounted mobile robot runs around on the plate to find the metal. The measured magneto-meter values are transferred to the host PC via wireless network. The system enables to improve the reliability of simulation as well as to help efficient exploration system design. Metal-detecting experiments were carried out to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2011.06a
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• pp.343-344
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• 2011

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.1011-1019
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• 2018

Existing exploration robot is able to control its speed using technologies such as the remote control and deep learning. However its speed control method using weather information has not been proposed. To overcome the problem of conventional methods without using the weather information which is an useful ordinary life information, this paper proposes a new speed control method of exploration robot using weather information gathered from RSS service which is offered without cost by the Meteorological Agency. The exploration robot implemented in this paper is controled by the remote control through the TCP/IP communication and provides real-time real spot figure gathered from its camera sensor within the range of WiFi. Additionally, according to the weather information from URL of the Meteorological Agency, the implemented exploration robot autonomously controls it speed. The correct performance of the proposed method is verified by the experimental measurement data of its speed according to the precipitation probability and wind speed in this paper.