• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.127-132
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• 2016

For a practical mobile robot team such as carrying out a search and rescue mission in a disaster area, the localization have to be guaranteed even in an environment where the network infrastructure is destroyed or a global positioning system (GPS) is unavailable. The proposed architecture supports localizing robots seamlessly by finding their relative locations while moving from a global outdoor environment to a local indoor position. The proposed schemes use a cooperative positioning system (CPS) based on the two-way ranging (TWR) technique. In the proposed TWR-based CPS, each non-localized mobile robot act as tag, and finds its position using bilateral range measurements of all localized mobile robots. The localized mobile robots act as anchors, and support the localization of mobile robots in the GPS-shadow region such as an indoor environment. As a tag localizes its position with anchors, the position error of the anchor propagates to the tag, and the position error of the tag accumulates the position errors of the anchor. To minimize the effect of error propagation, this paper suggests the new scheme of full-mesh based CPS for improving the position accuracy. The proposed schemes assuring localization were validated through experiment results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.323-326
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• 1996

In this paper, we propose a new method of the communication system for cooperative behavior and control in a collective autonomous mobile robots. A communication function among the collective robots is essential to intelligent cooperation. In general, global communication is effective for small number of robots. However when the number of robot goes on increasing, this becomes difficult to be realized because of limited communication capacity and increasing amount of information to handle. And also the problems such as communication interference and improper message transmission occur. So we propose local communication system based on infrared sensor to realize the cooperative behavior and control as the solution of above problem. It is possible to prevent overflow of information and exchange of complex information by combining communicate a specific robot. At last we verify the effectiveness of the proposed communication system from example of cooperative behavior.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.255-261
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• 2007

We propose a optimal fusion method for localization of multiple robots utilizing correlation between GPS on each robot in common workspace. Each mobile robot in group collects position data from each odometer and GPS receiver and shares the position data with other robots. Then each robot utilizes position data of other robot for obtaining more precise estimation of own position. Because GPS data errors in common workspace have a close correlation, they contribute to improve localization accuracy of all robots in group. In this paper, we simulate proposed optimal fusion method of odometer and GPS through virtual robots and position data.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1927-1932
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• 2003

In a previous study, the authors have proposed the Cooperative Collision Avoidance (CCA) method which enables mobile robots to cooperatively avoid collisions, by extending the concept of the Velocity Obstacle to multiple robot systems. The method introduced an evaluation function considering an operation objective so that each robot can choose the velocity which optimizes the function. As the evaluation function could be of an arbitrary type, this method is applicable to a wide variety of tasks. However, it complicates the optimization of the function especially in real-time. In addition, construction of the evaluation function requires an operation objective of the other robot which is very hard to obtain without communication. In this paper, the CCA method is improved considering such problems for implementation. To decrease computational costs, the previous method is simplified by introducing two essential assumptions. Then, by treating the desired direction of locomotion for each robot as the operation objective, an operation objective estimator which estimates the desired direction of the other robot is introduced. The only measurement required is the other robot's relative position, since the other information can be obtained through the estimation. Hence, communicational devices that are necessary for most other cooperative methods are not required. Moreover, mobile robots employing the method can avoid collisions with uncooperative robots or moving obstacles as well as with cooperative robots. Consequently, this improved method can be applied to general dynamic environments consisting of various mobile robots.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.720-723
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• 1997

This paper presents a cooperative control method for multiple robots. This method is based on local sensors. The proposed method integrates all information obtained by local perception through a set of sensors and generates commands without logical conflicts in designing control logic. To control multiple robots effectively, a global control strategy is proposed. These methods are constructed by using AND/OR logic and transition firing sequences in Petri nets. To evaluate these methods, the object-searching task is introduced. This task is to search an object like a box by two robots and consists of two sub-tasks, i.e., a wall tracking task and a robot tracking task. Simulation results for the object-searching task and the wall tracking task are presented to show the effectiveness of the method.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.429-434
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• 2013

This paper proposes a CPSO (Cooperative Particle Swarm Optimization)-based MPC (Model Predictive Control) scheme to deal with formation control problem of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots. In a distributed MPC framework, each robot needs to optimize control input sequence over a finite prediction horizon considering control inputs of the other robots where their cost functions are coupled by the state variables of the neighboring robots. In order to optimize the control input sequence, a CPSO algorithm is adopted and modified to fit into the formation control problem. Experiments are performed on a group of nonholonomic mobile robots to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CPSO-based MPC for multi-robot formation.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.262-272
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• 2015

In particular, for a practical mobile robot team to perform such a task as that of carrying out a search and rescue mission in a disaster area, the network connectivity and localization have to be guaranteed even in an environment where the network infrastructure is destroyed or a Global Positioning System is unavailable. This paper proposes the new collective intelligence network management architecture of multiple mobile robots supporting seamless network connectivity and cooperative localization. The proposed architecture includes a resource manager that makes the robots move around and not disconnect from the network link by considering the strength of the network signal and link quality. The location manager in the architecture supports localizing robots seamlessly by finding the relative locations of the robots as they move from a global outdoor environment to a local indoor position. The proposed schemes assuring network connectivity and localization were validated through numerical simulations and applied to a search and rescue robot team.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.722-730
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• 2008

This paper proposes two novel algorithms enabling mobile robots to cooperate with each other in a reliability-based system and a time-critical system. In the reliability-based cooperative system, the concepts of a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) and an object entropy are adopted in order to coordinate a specific task. A logical robot group is created based on the exchange of request and reply messages in a robot communication group whose organization depends on transmission range. In the time-critical cooperative system, relational entropy is used to define the relationship between mobile robots. A group leader is selected based on optimizing power consumption. The proposed algorithm has been verified based on the computer-based simulation and soccer robot experiment. The performance metrics are defined. The metrics include the number of messages needed to make a logical robot group and to obtain the relationship of robots and the power consumption to select a group leader. They are verified by simulation and experiment.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.50.5-50
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• 2002

In this paper, we propose a method using neural network (NN) to improve the motion control of a decentralized control system for cooperative transportation. In our former work, a decentralized control system for transporting a single object by multiple nonholonomic mobile robots has been developed. One of these mobile robots acts as a leader, who is assumed to be able to plan and to manipulate the omnidirectional motion of the object. Other robots, referred to as followers, cooperatively transport the object by keeping a constant position relative to the object. in this work, it is assumed that the leader can not only plan but also broadcast the local velocity of the object. Then...

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.121-129
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• 2017

In this study, we investigated a cooperative control system of assembly robots using wireless LAN. We developed two different types of robots to assemble three blocks on a workbench. Robot1 can assemble blocks on a workbench and Robot2 can carry blocks to Robot1. We constructed an ROS-based communication system and shared data. Three blocks and one workbench were recognized by camera-image processing By developing the UI using Windows programming language Visual C#, we evaluated the status of the robots and blocks and controlled the robots. The control system was developed by constructing all elements necessary for cooperative control, such as robot design and fabrication, motor control, ROS-based communication, and image processing. Thus, we completed fundamental tasks required for assembly.