• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.663-673
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• 2007

This paper presents a new moving obstacle detection method using an optical flow in mobile robot with an omnidirectional camera. Because an omnidirectional camera consists of a nonlinear mirror and CCD camera, the optical flow pattern in omnidirectional image is different from the pattern in perspective camera. The geometry characteristic of an omnidirectional camera has influence on the optical flow in omnidirectional image. When a mobile robot with an omnidirectional camera moves, the optical flow is not only theoretically calculated in omnidirectional image, but also investigated in omnidirectional and panoramic images. In this paper, the panoramic image is generalized from an omnidirectional image using the geometry of an omnidirectional camera. In particular, Focus of expansion (FOE) and focus of contraction (FOC) vectors are defined from the estimated optical flow in omnidirectional and panoramic images. FOE and FOC vectors are used as reference vectors for the relative evaluation of optical flow. The moving obstacle is turned out through the relative evaluation of optical flows. The proposed algorithm is tested in four motions of a mobile robot including straight forward, left turn, right turn and rotation. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by the experimental results.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.37.6-37
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• 2002

Omnidirectional mobile robots are capable of arbitrary motion in an arbitrary direction without changing the direction of wheels, because they can perform 3 degree-of-freedom (DOF) motion on a 2-dimensional plane. In this research, a new class of an omnidirectional mobile robot is proposed. Since it has synchronously steerable omnidirectional wheels, it is called an omnidirectional mobile robot with steerable omnidirectional wheels (OMR-SOW). It has 3 DOFs in motion and one DOF in steering. One steering DOF can function as a continuously variable transmission (CVT). CVT of the OMR-SOW increases the range of velocity ratio from the wheel velocities to robot velocity, which may improve...

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.8
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• pp.696-703
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• 2005

Since most autonomous mobile robots are powered by a battery, it is important to increase the continuous operating time without recharging. This can be achieved by improving the energy efficiency of a mobile robot, but little research on energy efficiency has been performed. This paper proposes two methods for improving the energy efficiency of an omnidirectional mobile robot.. One method is to realize a continuously variable transmission (CVT) by adopting the mechanism of steerable omnidirectional wheels. The other is the proposed steering algorithm in which wheel arrangement of the mobile robot is continuously adjusted so as to obtain the maximum energy efficiency of the motors during navigation. In addition, new omnidirectional wheels which can be transformed to the conventional wheels depending on the driving conditions are proposed to compensate for less efficient omnidirectional drive mode. Various tests show that motion control of the OMR-SOW works satisfactorily and the proposed steering algorithm for CVT can provide higher energy efficiency than the algorithm using a fixed steering angle. In addition, it is shown that the differential drive mode can give better energy efficiency than the omnidirectional drive mode.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.479-486
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• 2012

In this paper, a ranging system is proposed that is able to measure 360 degree omnidirectional distances to environment objects. The ranging system is based on the structured light imaging system with catadioptric omnidirectional mirror. In order to make the ranging system robust against environmental illumination, efficient structured light image processing algorithms are developed; sequential integration of difference images with modulated structured light and radial search based on Bresenham line drawing algorithm. A dedicated FPGA image processor is developed to speed up the overall image processing. Also the distance equation is derived in the omnidirectional imaging system with a hyperbolic mirror. It is expected that the omnidirectional ranging system is useful for mapping and localization of mobile robot. Experiments are carried out to verify the performance of the proposed ranging system.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.751-755
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• 2010

In this paper, we proposed an omnidirectional ranging system that is able to obtain $360^{\circ}$ all directional distances effectively based on structured light image. The omnidirectional ranging system consists of laser structured light source and a catadioptric omnidirectional camera with a curved mirror. The proposed integro-differential structured light image processing algorithm makes the ranging system robust against environmental illumination condition. The omnidirectional ranging system is useful for map-building and self-localization of a mobile robot.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.145-149
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• 2006

UHF band omnidirectional antennas for RFID tag were designed. Crossed loaded dipole and bended dipole were applied to be designed for both miniaturization and omnidirectional radiation pattern. By suppling 90 degrees phase difference between crossed dipoles, omnidirectional E-plane patterns can be obtained. -10 dB reflection coefficients of 3 types dipole antenna which have designed under conjugate matched with input impedance of chip were shown as 670-1,050 MHz, 700-1,250 MHz and 600-1,020 MHz, respectively, and also shown that all antenna have omnidirectional radiation pattern both E and H plane.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.91-98
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• 2008

This paper describes the recognition method of moving objects in mobile robot with an omnidirectional camera. The moving object is detected using the specific pattern of an optical flow in omnidirectional image. This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, the pattern of an optical flow is investigated in omnidirectional image. The optical flow in omnidirectional image is influenced on the geometry characteristic of an omnidirectional camera. The pattern of an optical flow is theoretically and experimentally investigated. In the second part, the detection of moving objects is presented from the estimated optical flow. The moving object is extracted through the relative evaluation of optical flows which is derived from the pattern of optical flow. In particular, Focus-Of-Expansion (FOE) and Focus-Of-Contraction (FOC) vectors are defined from the estimated optical flow. They are used as reference vectors for the relative evaluation of optical flows. The proposed algorithm is performed in four motions of a mobile robot such as straight forward, left turn, right turn and rotation. Experimental results using real movie show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.10-17
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• 2010

This paper presents a calibration method of an omnidirectional stereo camera which may be essentially performed for distance measurement to a certain point. In the calibration of the omnidirectional stereo camera, the independent calibrations of two cameras or the calibration of a stereo camera having the small baseline is feasible applying many methods studied in the past. However, the baseline should be large enough for long distance measurement by the omnidirectional stereo camera, since it is not easy to calibrate two cameras with a large baseline at the same time. It is because a test pattern for the calibration, which is simultaneously captured by two omnidirectional cameras, appears too small in at least one of the omnidirectional cameras. It causes inaccurate calibration. In this paper, therefore, we propose a calibration method of the omnidirectional stereo camera with a large baseline and empirically verify its feasibility.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.63-70
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• 2007

Since the fisheye lens has a wide field of view, it can capture the scene and illumination from all directions from far less number of omnidirectional images. Due to these advantages of the omnidirectional camera, it is widely used in surveillance and reconstruction of 3D structure of the scene In this paper, we present a new self-calibration algorithm of omnidirectional camera from uncalibrated images by considering the inlier distribution. First, one parametric non-linear projection model of omnidirectional camera is estimated with the known rotation and translation parameters. After deriving projection model, we can compute an essential matrix of the camera with unknown motions, and then determine the camera information: rotation and translations. The standard deviations are used as a quantitative measure to select a proper inlier set. The experimental results showed that we can achieve a precise estimation of the omnidirectional camera model and extrinsic parameters including rotation and translation.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.10-14
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• 2011

In this paper, we present an efficient hardware architecture of unrolling image mapper of catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems. The catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems generate images of 360 degrees of view and need to be transformed into panorama images in rectangular coordinate. In most application, it has to perform the panorama unrolling in real-time and at low-cost, especially for high-resolution images. The proposed hardware architecture adopts a software/hardware cooperative structure and employs several optimization schemes using look-up-table(LUT) of coordinate conversion. To avoid the on-line division operation caused by the coordinate transformation algorithm, the proposed architecture has the LUT which has pre-computed division factors. And then, the amount of memory used by the LUT is reduced to 1/4 by using symmetrical characteristic compared with the conventional architecture. Experimental results show that the proposed hardware architecture achieves an effective real-time performance and lower implementation cost, and it can be applied to other kinds of catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems.