• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.30-39
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• 2016

This research presents the development of a self-governing mobile robot navigation system for indoor construction applications. This self-governing robot navigation system integrated robot control units, various positioning techniques including a dead-reckoning system, a UWB platform and motion sensors, with a BIM path planner solution. Various algorithms and error correction methods have been tested for all the employed sensors and other components to improve the positioning and navigation capability of the system. The research demonstrated that the path planner utilizing a BIM model as a navigation site map could effectively extract an efficient path for the robot, and could be executed in a real-time application for construction environments. Several navigation strategies with a mobile robot were tested with various combinations of localization sensors including wheel encoders, sonar/infrared/thermal proximity sensors, motion sensors, a digital compass, and UWB. The system successfully demonstrated the ability to plan an efficient path for robot's movement and properly navigate through the planned path to reach the specified destination in a complex indoor construction site. The findings can be adopted to several potential construction or manufacturing applications such as robotic material delivery, inspection, and onsite security.

• BMB Reports
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.293-298
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• 2012

The p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) is involved in various processes, including stress responses, development, and differentiation. However, little information on p38 MAPK in insects is available. In this study, a p38 MAPK gene, $Accp38b$, was isolated from $Apis$ $cerana$ $cerana$ and characterized. The quantitative real-time PCR (Q-PCR) analysis revealed that $Accp38b$ was induced by multiple stressors. Notably, the expression of $Accp38b$ was relatively higher in the pupae phase than in other developmental phases. During the pupae phase, Accp38b expression was higher in the thorax than in the head and abdomen and higher in the fat body than in the muscle and midgut. Immunohistochemisty showed significant positive staining of Accp38b in sections from the brain, eyes, fat body, and midgut of $A.$ $cerana$ $cerana$. These results suggest that Accp38b may play a crucial role in stress responses and have multiple aspects function during development.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.376-382
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• 2010

We propose a novel method to precisely detect car license plates by locating main characters, which are printed with large font size. The regions of the main characters are directly detected without detecting the plate region boundaries, so that license regions can be detected more precisely than by other existing methods. To generate a binary image, multiple thresholds are applied, and segmented regions are selected from multiple binarized images by a criterion of size and compactness. We do not employ any character matching methods, so that many candidates for main character groups are detected; thus, we use a neural network to reject non-main character groups from the candidates. The relation of the character regions and the intensity statistics are used as the input to the neural network for classification. The detection performance has been investigated on real images captured under various illumination conditions for 1000 vehicles. 980 plates were correctly detected, and almost all non-detected plates were so stained that their characters could not be isolated for character recognition. In addition, the processing time is fast enough for a commercial automatic license plate recognition system. Therefore, the proposed method can be used for recognition systems with high performance and fast processing.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.944-951
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• 2016

Tdrd12 is one of tudor domain containing (Tdrd) family members. However, the expression pattern of Tdrd12 has not been well studied. To compare the expression levels of Tdrd12 in various tissues, real time-polymerase chain reaction was performed using total RNAs from liver, small intestine, heart, brain, kidney, lung, spleen, stomach, uterus, ovary, and testis. Tdrd12 mRNA was highly expressed in testis. Antibody against mouse TDRD12 were generated using amino acid residues SQRPNEKPLRLTEKKDC of TDRD12 to investigate TDRD12 localization in testis. Immunostaining assay shows that TDRD12 is mainly localized at the spermatid in the seminiferous tubules of adult testes. During postnatal development, TDRD12 is differentially expressed. TDRD12 was detected in early spermatocytes at 2 weeks and TDRD12 was localized at acrosome of the round spermatids. TDRD12 expression was not co-localized with TDRD1 which is an important component of piRNA pathway in germ cells. Our results indicate that TDRD12 may play an important role in spermatids and function as a regulator of spermatogenesis in dependent of TDRD1.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.846-849
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• 2008

In recent years there has been growing interest in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for a variety of indoor applications. In this paper, we present the RSSI-based localization in indoor environments. In order to evaluate the relationship between distance and RSSI, the log-normal path loss shadowing model is used. By tagging users with a sensor node and deploying a number of nodes at fixed position in the building, the RSSI can be used to determine the position of tagged user. This system operates by recording and processing signal strength information at the base stations. It combines Euclidean distance technique with signal strength matrix obtained during real-time measurement to determine the location of user. The experimental results presented the ability of this system to estimate user's location with a accuracy.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.79-85
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• 2018

This study focuses on autonomous exploration based on map expansion for an underwater robot equipped with acoustic sonars. Map expansion is applicable to large-area mapping, but it may affect localization accuracy. Thus, as the key contribution of this paper, we propose a method for underwater autonomous exploration wherein the robot determines the trade-off between map expansion ratio and position accuracy, selects which of the two has higher priority, and then moves to a mission step. An occupancy grid map is synthesized by utilizing the measurements of an acoustic range sonar that determines the probability of occupancy. This information is then used to determine a path to the frontier, which becomes the new search point. During area searching and map building, the robot revisits artificial landmarks to improve its position accuracy as based on imaging sonar-based recognition and EKF-SLAM if the position accuracy is above the predetermined threshold. Additionally, real-time experiments were conducted by using an underwater robot, yShark, to validate the proposed method, and the analysis of the results is discussed herein.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.913-923
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• 2014

This paper proposes a global mapping algorithm for multiple robots from an omnidirectional-vision simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) approach based on an object extraction method using Lucas-Kanade optical flow motion detection and images obtained through fisheye lenses mounted on robots. The multi-robot mapping algorithm draws a global map by using map data obtained from all of the individual robots. Global mapping takes a long time to process because it exchanges map data from individual robots while searching all areas. An omnidirectional image sensor has many advantages for object detection and mapping because it can measure all information around a robot simultaneously. The process calculations of the correction algorithm are improved over existing methods by correcting only the object's feature points. The proposed algorithm has two steps: first, a local map is created based on an omnidirectional-vision SLAM approach for individual robots. Second, a global map is generated by merging individual maps from multiple robots. The reliability of the proposed mapping algorithm is verified through a comparison of maps based on the proposed algorithm and real maps.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.314-321
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• 2005

In this paper an intelligence embedding quadruped pet robot is described. It has 15 degrees of freedom and consists of various sensors such as CMOS image, voice recognition and sound localization, inclinometer, thermistor, real-time clock, tactile touch, PIR and IR to allows owners to interact with pet robot according to human's intention as well as the original features of pet animals. The architecture is flexible and adopts various embedded processors for handling sensors to provide modular structure. The pet robot is also used for additional purpose such like security, gaming visual tracking, and research platform. It is possible to generate various actions and behaviors and to download voice or music files to maintain a close relation of users. With cost-effective sensor, the pet robot is able to find its recharge station and recharge itself when its battery runs low. To facilitate programming of the robot, we support several development environments. Therefore, the developed system is a low-cost programmable entertainment robot platform.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.1021-1026
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• 2016

The graph-based SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) approach has been gaining much attention in SLAM research recently thanks to its ability to provide better maps and full trajectory estimations when compared to the filtering-based SLAM approach. Even though graph-based SLAM requires batch processing causing it to be computationally heavy, recent advancements in optimization and computing power enable it to run fast enough to be used in real-time. However, data association problems still require large amount of computation when building a pose graph. For example, to find loop closures it is necessary to consider the whole history of the robot trajectory and sensor data within the confident range. As a pose graph grows, the number of candidates to be searched also grows. It makes searching the loop closures a bottleneck when solving the SLAM problem. Our approach to alleviate this bottleneck is to sample a limited number of pose nodes in which loop closures are searched. We propose a heuristic for sampling pose nodes that are most advantageous to closing loops by providing a way of ranking pose nodes in order of usefulness for closing loops.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.361-367
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• 2006

This paper describes a novel stereo vision based localization of free parking site, which recognizes the target position of automatic parking system. Pixel structure classification and feature based stereo matching extract the 3D information of parking site in real time. The pixel structure represents intensity configuration around a pixel and the feature based stereo matching uses step-by-step investigation strategy to reduce computational load. This paper considers only parking site divided by marking, which is generally drawn according to relevant standards. Parking site marking is separated by plane surface constraint and is transformed into bird's eye view, on which template matching is performed to determine the location of parking site. Obstacle depth map, which is generated from the disparity of adjacent vehicles, can be used as the guideline of template matching by limiting search range and orientation. Proposed method using both the obstacle depth map and the bird's eye view of parking site marking increases operation speed and robustness to visual noise by effectively limiting search range.