• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.215-225
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• 2020

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors detect the distance of the surrounding environment and objects. Conventional LiDAR sensors require a certain amount of a power because they detect objects by transmitting lasers at a regular interval depending on a constant resolution. The constant power consumption from operating multiple LiDAR sensors is detrimental to autonomous and electric vehicles using battery power. In this paper, we propose two algorithms that improve the inefficient power consumption during the constant operation of LiDAR sensors. LiDAR sensors with algorithms efficiently reduce the power consumption in two ways: (a) controlling the resolution to vary the laser transmission period (T_P) of a laser diode (LD) depending on the vehicle's speed and (b) reducing the static power consumption using a sleep mode depending on the surrounding environment. A proposed LiDAR sensor with a resolution control algorithm reduces the power consumption of the LD by 6.92% to 32.43% depending on the vehicle's speed, compared to the maximum number of laser transmissions (N_x·max). The sleep mode with a surrounding environment-sensing algorithm reduces the power consumption by 61.09%. The proposed LiDAR sensor has a risk factor for 4-cycles that does not detect objects in the sleep mode, but we consider it to be negligible because it immediately switches to an active mode when a change in surrounding conditions occurs. The proposed LiDAR sensor was tested on a commercial processor chip with the algorithm controlling the resolution according to the vehicle's speed and the surrounding environment.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.516-520
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to determine optimal filtering condition and threshold for the detection of gait-cycles for various walkway slopes as well as gait velocities. Ten young healthy subjects with accelerometer system on thigh and ankle walked on a treadmill at 9 conditions (three speeds and three slopes) for 5 minutes. Two direction signals, i.e. anterior-posterior (AP) and superior-inferior (SI) directions, of each sensor (four sensor orientations) were used to detect specific events of gait cycle. Variation of the threshold (from -1G to 1G) and lowpass cutoff frequency (fc) were applied to the event detection and their performance was evaluated according to the error index (EI), which was defined as the combination of the accuracy and false positive rate. Optimal fc and threshold were determined for each slope in terms of the EI. The optimal fc, threshold and their corresponding EI depended much on the walkway slope so that their coefficients of variation (CV) ranged 19~120%. When all data for 3 slopes were used in the identification of optimal conditions for each sensor, the best error indices for all sensor orientations were comparable ranging 1.43~1.76%, but the optimal fc and threshold depended much on the sensor position. The result indicates that the gait-cycle detection robust to walkway slope is possible by threshold method with well-defined filtering condition and threshold.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.66-66
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• 2011

Anodic titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanotubes are very attractive materials for gas sensors due to its large surface to volume ratios. The most widely known method for fabrication of TiO2 nanotubes is anodic oxidation of metallic Ti foil. Since the remaining Ti substrate is a metallic conductor, TiO2 nanotube arrays on Ti are not appropriate for gas sensor applications. Detachment of the TiO2 nanotube arrays from the Ti Substrate or the formation of electrodes onto the TiO2 nanotube arrays have been used to demonstrate gas sensors based on TiO2 nanotubes. But the sensitivity was much lower than those of TiO2 gas sensors based on conventional TiO2 nanoparticle films. In this study, Ti thin films were deposited onto a SiO2/Si substrate by electron beam evaporation. Samples were anodized in ethylene glycol solution and ammonium fluoride (NH4F) with 0.1wt%, 0.2wt%, 0.3wt% and potentials ranging from 30 to 60V respectively. After anodization, the samples were annealed at $600^{\circ}C$ in air for 1 hours, leading to porous TiO2 films with TiO2 nanotubes. With changing temperature and CO concentration, gas sensor performance of the TiO2 nanotube gas sensors were measured, demonstrating the potential advantages of the porous TiO2 films for gas sensor applications. The details on the fabrication and gas sensing performance of TiO2 nanotube sensors will be presented.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.169-173
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• 2023

With the increasing concern of global warming caused by greenhouse gases owing to the recent industrial development, there is a growing need for advanced technology to control these emissions. Among the various greenhouse gases, nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) is a major contributor to global warming and is mainly released from sources, such as automobile exhaust and factories. Although semiconductor-type NO₂ gas sensors, such as SnO₂, have been extensively studied, they often require high operating temperatures and complicated manufacturing processes, while lacking selectivity, resulting in inaccurate measurements of NO₂ gas levels. To address these limitations, a novel sensor using PbS quantum dots (QDs) was developed, which operates at low temperatures and exhibits high selectivity toward NO₂ gas owing to its strong oxidation reaction. Furthermore, the use of P3HT conductive polymer improved the thin film quality, reactivity, and reaction rate of the sensor. The sensor demonstrated the ability to accurately measure NO₂ gas concentrations ranging from 500 to 100 ppm, with a 5.1 times higher sensitivity, 1.5 times higher response rate, and 1.15 times higher recovery rate compared with sensors without P3HT.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.338-344
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• 2010

This paper discusses the development of the control system of a mini quadrotor in Konkuk University for indoor applications. The attitude control system consists of a stability augmentation system, which acts as the inner loop control, and a modern control approach based on modeling will be implemented as the outer loop. The inner loop control was experimentally satisfied by a proportional-derivative controller; this was used to support the flight test in order to validate the modeling. This paper introduces the mathematical model for the simulation and design of the optimal control on the outer loop control. To perform the experimental tests, basic electronic hardware was developed using simple configurations; a microcontroller used as the embedded controller, a low-cost 100 Hz inertial sensors used for the inertial sensing, infra-red sensors were employed for horizontal ranging, an ultrasonic sensor was used for ground ranging and a high performance propeller system built on an quadrotor airframe was also employed. The results acquired from this compilation of hardware produced an automatic hovering ability of the system with ground control system support for the monitoring and fail-safe system.

• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.14-19
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• 2012

The present study conducts experimental investigation on spreading and deposition characteristics of a $4.3{\mu}l$ de-ionized (DI) water droplet impacting upon aluminum (Al 6061) flat and textured surfaces. The micro-textured surface consisted the micro-hole arrays (hole diameter: $125{\mu}m$, hole depth: $125{\mu}m$) fabricated by the conventional micro-computer numerical control (${\mu}$-CNC) milling machine process. We examined the surface effect of texture area fraction ${\varphi}_s$ ranging from 0 to 0.57 and impact velocity of droplet ranging from 0.40 m/s to 1.45 m/s on spreading and deposition characteristics from captured images. We used a high-speed camera to capture sequential images for investigate spreading characteristics and the image sensor to capture image of final equilibrium deposition droplet for analyze spreading diameter and contact angle. We found that the deposition droplet on textured surfaces have different wetting states. When the impact velocity is low, the non-wetting state partially exists, whereas over 0.64 m/s of impact velocity, totally wetting state is more prominent due to the increase kinetic energy of impinging droplet.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.603-616
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• 2021

Over the last few years, autonomous vehicles have progressed very rapidly. The odometry technique that estimates displacement from consecutive sensor inputs is an essential technique for autonomous driving. In this article, we propose a fast, robust, and accurate odometry technique. The proposed technique is light detection and ranging (LiDAR)-based direct odometry, which uses a spherical range image (SRI) that projects a three-dimensional point cloud onto a two-dimensional spherical image plane. Direct odometry is developed in a vision-based method, and a fast execution speed can be expected. However, applying LiDAR data is difficult because of the sparsity. To solve this problem, we propose an SRI generation method and mathematical analysis, two key point sampling methods using SRI to increase precision and robustness, and a fast optimization method. The proposed technique was tested with the KITTI dataset and real environments. Evaluation results yielded a translation error of 0.69%, a rotation error of 0.0031°/m in the KITTI training dataset, and an execution time of 17 ms. The results demonstrated high precision comparable with state-of-the-art and remarkably higher speed than conventional techniques.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.131-147
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• 2020

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) identifies a specific object by radio signals. As the tag provides a unique ID for the purpose of identification, RFID technology effectively solves the ambiguity and occlusion problem that challenges the laser or camera-based approach. This paper proposes an approach to track a moving object based on the integration of RFID and laser ranging information using a particle filter. To be precise, we split laser scan points into different clusters which contain the potential moving objects and calculate the radial velocity of each cluster. The velocity information is compared with the radial velocity estimated from RFID phase difference. In order to achieve the positioning of the moving object, we select a number of K best matching clusters to update the weights of the particle filter. To further improve the positioning accuracy, we incorporate RFID signal strength information into the particle filter using a pre-trained sensor model. The proposed approach is tested on a SCITOS service robot under different types of tags and various human velocities. The results show that fusion of signal strength and laser ranging information has significantly increased the positioning accuracy when compared to radial velocity matching-based or signal strength-based approaches. The proposed approach provides a solution for human machine interaction and object tracking, which has potential applications in many fields for example supermarkets, libraries, shopping malls, and exhibitions.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.14-18
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• 2020

This study investigates the nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) sensing characteristics of an Si MOSFET gas sensor with a tungsten trioxide (WO₃) sensing layer deposited using the sputtering method. The Si MOSFET gas sensor consists of a horizontal floating gate (FG) interdigitated with a control gate (CG). The WO₃ sensing layer is deposited on the interdigitated CG-FG of a field effect transistor(FET)-type gas sensor platform. The sensing layer is deposited with different thicknesses of the film ranging from 100 nm to 1 ㎛ by changing the deposition times during the sputtering process. The sensing characteristics of the fabricated gas sensor are measured at different NO₂ concentrations and operating temperatures. The response of the gas sensor increases as the NO₂ concentration and operating temperature increase. However, the gas sensor has an optimal performance at 180℃ considering both response and recovery speed. The response of the gas sensor increases significantly from 24% to 138% as the thickness of the sensing layer increases from 100 nm to 1 ㎛. The sputtered WO₃ film consists of a dense part and a porous part. As reported in previous work, the area of the porous part of the film increases as the thickness of the film increases. This increased porous part promotes the reaction of the sensing layer with the NO₂ gas. Consequently, the response of the gas sensor increases as the thickness of the sputtered WO₃ film increases.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.10
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• pp.60-68
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• 2012

Current wireless sensor networks are considered to support more complex operations ranging from military to health care which require energy-efficient and timely transmission of large amounts of data. In this paper, we propose an adaptive temporal suppression algorithm which exploits a temporal correlation among sensor readings. The proposed scheme can significantly reduce the number of transmitted sensor readings by sensor node, and consequently decrease the energy consumption and delay. Instead of transmitting all sensor readings from sensor node to sink node, the proposed scheme is to selectively transmit some elements of sensor readings using the adaptive temporal suppression, and the sink node is able to reconstruct the original data without deteriorating data quality by linear interpolation. In our proposed scheme, sensing data stream at sensor node is divided into many small sensing windows and the transmission ratio in each window is decided by the window complexity. It is defined as the number of a fluctuation point which has greater absolute gradient than threshold value. We have been able to achieve up about 90% communication reduction while maintaining a minimal distortion ratio 6.5% in 3 samples among 4 ones.