• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.951-957
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• 2010

An optimal path generation method considering the safety of UGV(Unmanned Ground Vehicle) is proposed and demonstrated through examples. Among various functions of UGV, real-time obstacle avoidance is a key issue to realize realistic scenario in FCS(Future Combat Systems). A two-dimensional narrow corridor environment is considered as a test field. For each step of UGV movement, two objectives are considered: One is to minimize the distance to the target and the other to maximize the distance to the nearest point of an obstacle. A weighted objective function is used in the optimization problem. Equality and inequality constraints are taken to secure the UGV's dynamics and safety. The weighting factors are controlled by a fuzzy controller which is constructed by a fuzzy rule set and membership functions. Simulations are performed for two cases. First the weighting factors are considered as constant values to understand the characteristics of the corresponding solutions and then as variables that are adjusted by the fuzzy controller. The results are satisfactory for realistic situations considered. The proposed optimal path generation with the fuzzy control is expected to be well applicable to real environment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.101-106
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• 2010

Researches on air-ground robot cooperating system has been made recently. The cooperation among homogeneous robots focused on the architecture of the system, quality and influence of the communication. In contrast, the cooperation among heterogeneous robots such as aerial vehicle and ground vehicle robots has not been much handled. There are a couple of main points for those air-ground cooperating robots. One is using UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) as an extra sensor of UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle). This kind of application is usually used in situations such as guiding UGV to an appropriate path which could be better determined from the eye in the sky as UAV. The other main application of air-ground cooperating robot system is the localization. By combining sensor information from both UAV and UGV, the robot system as a whole can localize a target object or find features in the environment with better performance than UGV or UAV alone. Although these applications are recently studied in many different ways and devices, there are still a lot of possibilities in the field of air-ground cooperating robot systems. We introduce those research fields in this paper.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.171-179
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• 2010

A fundamental technology of UGV(Unmanned Ground Vehicle) to perform a given mission with success in various environment is a path planning method which generates a safe and optimal path to the goal. In this paper, we suggest a local path-planning method of UGV based on the binary map using world model data which is gathered from terrain perception sensors. In specially, we present three core algorithms such as shortest path computation algorithm, path optimization algorithm and path smoothing algorithm those are used in the each composition module of LPP component. A simulation is conducted with M&S(Modeling & Simulation) system in order to verify the performance of each core algorithm and the performance of LPP component with scenarios.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.990-997
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• 2010

The Mission environment of UGV(Unmanned Ground Vehicle) has a complexity and variety, and the status of system and sensor is dependent on the environment factors such as operation time, the weather and road type. It is necessary for UGV to cope adaptively with the various mission types, operation modes and operation environment as human operators do. To satisfy this necessity, we present an autonomy manager based on the autonomous architecture. In this paper, we design a path planning software architecture and LPP manager by using open autonomous architecture which is previously designed by ADD. Field test is conducted with UGV in order to verify the performance of LPP Manager based on the Autonomous Architecture with scenarios.

• Journal of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2012

The UGV is one of the special field robot developed for mine detection, surveillance and transportation. To achieve successfully the missions of the UGV, the accurate and reliable navigation data should be provided. This paper presents design and implementation of multi-sensor-based open architecture integrated navigation for localization of UGV. The presented architecture hierarchically classifies the integrated system into four layers and data communications between layers are based on the distributed object oriented middleware. The navigation manager determines the navigation mode with the QoS information of each navigation sensor and the integrated filter performs the navigation mode-based data fusion in the filtering process. Also, all navigation variables including the filter parameters and QoS of navigation data can be modified in GUI and consequently, the user can operate the integrated navigation system more usefully. The conventional GPS/INS integrated system does not guarantee the long-term reliability of localization when GPS solution is not available by signal blockage and intentional jamming in outdoor environment. The presented integration algorithm, however, based on the adaptive federated filter structure with FDI algorithm can integrate effectively the output of multi-sensor such as 3D LADAR, vision, odometer, magnetic compass and zero velocity to enhance the accuracy of localization result in the case that GPS is unavailable. The field test was carried out with the UGV and the test results show that the presented integrated navigation system can provide more robust and accurate localization performance than the conventional GPS/INS integrated system in outdoor environments.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.408-414
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• 2009

A GPS/INS system is widely used in the UGV to estimate position during the mission. However, there are few restrictions when a GPS/INS system used alone. For example, GPS provides precise location information but easily interrupted by external factors like weather, environment, etc. INS provides continuous location data but positioning errors grew very rapidly with time. Therefore, it is necessary to integrating multi-sensors for more continuous and correct position estimation. In this paper, we propose location estimation algorithm of the UGV for GPS/INS integrated system that combines Fuzzy Inference and Unscented Particle Filter(UPF) to improve navigation. Fuzzy inference provides the simplest method integrating GPS/INS and UPF is non-linear estimation filter well suited to the correction of errors. The performance of the proposed algorithm was tested to compare with other algorithms. the results show that the proposed algorithm is more accuracy in position estimation and ensures continuous position tracking.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.33 no.8
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• pp.832-841
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• 2009

Wheels of UGV can be used to get the information about the ground. However, wheels of UGV with actively articulated suspension cannot be used as the roles because the each wheel does not remain in contact with the ground. Therefore, in this study, we proposed the indexes and models to estimate the contact wheels. First, we formulated the dynamic equations about the actively articulated suspensions and wheels. Then estimation index $I_{WTC}$ and $I_{ATC}$ were developed from the equations, and analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of each index. As the results, we developed the fuzzy rule-based estimation model additionally derived from our observations. $I_{WTC}$ model and $I_{ATC}$ model could eliminate the noise of about 60% in comparison with the result without the estimation model. Fuzzy model also could reduce the noise of about 83%. In addition, fuzzy rule-based estimation model had high sensitivity and precision as well as robustness.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2013

$A^*$ algorithm is a global path generation algorithm, and typically create a path using only the distance information. Therefore along the path, a moving vehicle is usually not be considered by driving characteristics. Deceleration at the corner is one of the driving characteristics of the vehicle. In this paper, considering this characteristic, a new evaluation function based path algorithm is proposed to decrease the number of driving path corner, in order to reduce the driving cost, such as driving time, fuel consumption and so on. Also the potential field method is applied for driving of UGV, which is robust against static and dynamic obstacle environment during following the generated path of the mobile robot under. The driving time and path following test was occurred by experiments based on a pseudo UGV, mobile robot in downscaled UGV's maximum and driving speed in corner. The experiment results were confirmed that the driving time by the proposed algorithm was decreased comparing with the results from $A^*$ algorithm.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.327-334
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• 2011

It is necessary that UGV(Unmanned Ground Vehicle) should generate a real-time travesability index map by analyzing raw terrain information to travel autonomously tough terrain which has various slope and roughness values. In this paper, we propose a local path planning method, $MA^*$(Modified $A^*$) algorithm, using DVGM (Directional Velocity Grid Map) for unmanned ground vehicle. We also present a path optimization algorithm and a path smoothing algorithm which regenerate a pre-planned local path by $MA^*$ algorithm into the reasonable local path considering the mobility of UGV. Field test is conducted with UGV in order to verify the performance of local path planning method using DVGM. The local path planned by $MA^*$ is compared with the result of $A^*$ to verify the safety and optimality of proposed algorithm.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.244-250
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• 2008

This paper describes the design and implementation of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) and also estimates how well autonomous navigation and remote control of UGV can be performed through the optimized arbitration of several sensor data, which are acquired from vision, obstacle detection, positioning system, etc. For the autonomous navigation, lane detection and tracing, global positioning, and obstacle avoidance are necessarily required. In addition, for the remote control, two types of experimental environments are established. One is to use a commercial racing wheel module, and the other is to use a haptic device that is useful for a user application based on virtual reality. Experimental results show that autonomous navigation and remote control of the designed UGV can be achieved with more effectiveness and accuracy using the proper arbitration of sensor data and navigation plan.