• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.30 no.4 s.247
• /
• pp.364-372
• /
• 2006

In this paper, we present a finger tip tactile sensor which can detect contact normal force as well as slip. The sensor is made up of two different materials, such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) known as piezoelectric polymer, and pressure variable resistor ink. In order to detect slip on the surface of the object, two PVDF strips are arranged along the normal direction in the robot finger tip and the thumb tip. The surface electrode of the PVDF strip is fabricated using silk-screening technique with silver paste. Also a thin flexible force sensor is fabricated in the form of a matrix using pressure variable resistor ink in order to sense the static force. The developed tactile sensor is physically flexible and it can be deformed three-dimensionally to any shape so that it can be placed on anywhere on the curved surface. In addition, a tactile sensing system is developed, which includes miniaturized charge amplifier to amplify the small signal from the sensor, and the fast signal processing unit. The sensor system is evaluated experimentally and its effectiveness is validated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.309-316
• /
• 2016

In this study, we described the design of a three-axis force/torque sensor for measuring the force and torque in a lower-limb rehabilitation robot. The three-axis force/torque sensor is composed of Fx force sensor, Fz force sensor and Tz torque sensor. The sensing element for Fx force sensor and Tz torque sensor is used in a two-step parallel plate beam, and that of Fz force sensor is used in a parallel plate beam. The rated loads of Fx force sensor, Tz torque sensor and Fz force sensor are 300 N, 15 N m and 100 N, respectively. The three-axis force/torque sensor was designed using the finite element method, and manufactured using strain-gauges. The three-axis force sensor was further characterized. As a result, the interference error of the three-axis force/torque sensor was < 1.24%, the repeatability error of each sensor was < 0.03%, and the non-linearity was < 0.02%.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2005.06a
• /
• pp.1808-1813
• /
• 2005

In this paper, we present the finger tip tactile sensor which can detect contact normal force as well as slip. The developed sensor is made of two different materials, such as polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF) that is known as piezoelectric polymer and pressure variable resistor ink. In order to detect slip to surface of object, a PVDF strip is arranged along the normal direction in the robot finger tip and the thumb tip. The surface electrode of the PVDF strip is fabricated using silk-screening technique with silver paste. Also a thin flexible force sensor is fabricated in the form of a matrix using pressure variable resistor ink in order to sense the static force. The developed tactile sensor is physically flexible and it can be deformed three-dimensionally to any shape so that it can be placed on anywhere on the curved surface. In addition, we developed a tactile sensing system by miniaturizing the charge amplifier, in order to amplify the small signal from the sensor, and the fast signal processing unit. The sensor system is evaluated experimentally and its effectiveness is validated.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.79-87
• /
• 2011

This paper presents the optimal design of an overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring for high resolution obstacle detection of an autonomous mobile robot. It is assumed that a set of low directivity ultrasonic sensors of the same type are arranged along a circle of nonzero radius at a regular spacing with their beams overlapped. First, taking into account the dead angle region, the entire range of obstacle detection is determined with reference to the center of an overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring. Second, the optimal design index of an overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring is defined as the area closeness of three sensing subzones resulting from beam overlap. Third, the lower and upper bounds on the number of ultrasonic sensors are derived, which can guarantee minimal beam overlap and also avoid excessive beam overlap among adjacent ultrasonic sensors. Fourth, employing a commercial low directivity ultrasonic sensor, an optimal design example of an overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring is given along with the ultrasonic sensor ring prototype mounted on top of a mobile robot. Finally, some experimental results using our prototype ultrasonic sensor ring are given to demonstrate the validity and performance of an optimally overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring for high resolution obstacle detection.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2000.11a
• /
• pp.643-646
• /
• 2000

In this study, we constructed a preview-sensing visual sensor system for weld seam tracking in real time in GMA welding. A sensor part consists of a CCD camera, a band-pass filter, a diode laser system with a cylindrical lens, and a vision board for inter frame process. We used a commercialized robot system which includes a GMA welding machine. To extract the weld seam we used a inter frame process in vision board from that we could remove the noise due to the spatters and fume in the image. Since the image was very reasonable by using the inter frame process, we could use the simplest way to extract the weld seam from the image, such as first differential and central difference method. Also we used a moving average method to the successive position data of weld seam for reducing the data fluctuation. In experiment the developed robot system with visual sensor could be able to track a most popular weld seam, such as a fillet-joint, a V-groove, and a lap-joint of which weld seam include planar and height directional variation.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.419-425
• /
• 2012

This paper presents an approach to implement the behaviors of multi-robots responding to user's input characters. The robots are appropriately displaced to express any input characters. Using our method, any user can easily and friendly control multirobots. The responses of the robots to the user's input are intuitive. We utilize the centroidal Voronoi algorithm and the continuoustime Lloyd algorithm, which have popularly been used for the optimal sensing coverage problems. Collision protection is considered to be applied for real robots. LED sensors are used to identify positions of multi-robots. Our approach is evaluated through experiments with five mobile robots. When a user draw alphabets, the robots are deployed correspondingly. By checking position errors, the feasibility of our method is validated.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.11 no.11
• /
• pp.2083-2089
• /
• 2007

In this paper addresses the low-level behavior of fuzzy control and the high-level behavior selector for Autonomous Mobile Robots(AMRs) based on a Fuzzy Artificial Immune Network. The sensing information that comes from ultrasonic sensors is the antigen it, and stimulates antibodies. There are many possible combinations of actions between action-patterns and external situations. The question is how to handle the situations to decide the proper action. We propose a fuzzy artificial immune network to solve the above problem. and the computer simulation for an AMR action selector shows the usefulness of the proposed action selector.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.14 no.10
• /
• pp.1005-1013
• /
• 2008

This paper describes a new sensor system for 3D range measurement using the structured infrared light. Environment and obstacle sensing is the key issue for mobile robot localization and navigation. Laser scanners and infrared scanners cover $180^{\circ}$ and are accurate but too expensive. Those sensors use rotating light beams so that the range measurements are constrained on a plane. 3D measurements are much more useful in many ways for obstacle detection, map building and localization. Stereo vision is very common way of getting the depth information of 3D environment. However, it requires that the correspondence should be clearly identified and it also heavily depends on the light condition of the environment. Instead of using stereo camera, monocular camera and the projected infrared light are used in order to reduce the effects of the ambient light while getting 3D depth map. Modeling of the projected light pattern enabled precise estimation of the range. Identification of the cells from the pattern is the key issue in the proposed method. Several methods of correctly identifying the cells are discussed and verified with experiments.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.193-202
• /
• 2012

In this paper, we propose a new approach for compact range sensor system for real-time robot applications. Instead of using off-the-shelf camera and projector, we devise a compact system with a CMOS image-sensor and a DMD (Digital Micro-mirror Device) that yields smaller dimension ($168{\times}50{\times}60mm$) and lighter weight (500g). We also realize one chip hard-wired processing of projection of structured-light and computing the range by exploiting correspondences between CMOS images-ensor and DMD. This application-specific chip processing is implemented on an FPGA in real-time. Our range acquisition system performs 30 times faster than the same implementation in software. We also devise an efficient methodology to identify a proper light intensity to enhance the quality of range sensor and minimize the decoding error. Our experimental results show that the total-error is reduced by 16% compared to the average case.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.310-316
• /
• 2017

The robot proximity and tactile sensors can be categorized into two groups: grip sensors and safety sensors. They have different performance requirements. The safety sensor should have long proximity range and fast response in order to secure enough response time before colliding with ambient objects. As for the tactile sensing function, the safety sensor need to be fast and compliant to mitigate the impact from a collision. In order to meet these requirements, we proposed and demonstrated a compliant integrated safety sensor suitable to human-friendly robots. An ultrasonic proximity sensor and a piezoelectric tactile sensor made of PVDF films have been integrated in a compliant PDMS structure. The implemented sensor demonstrated the maximum proximity range of 35 cm. The directional tolerance for 30 cm detection range was about ${\pm}15^{\circ}$ from the normal axis. The integrated PVDF tactile sensor was able to detect various impacts of up to 20 N in a controlled experimental setup.