• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.41-49
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• 2022

With the advancement of intelligent vehicles and unmanned systems, there is a growing interest in underwater surveys using autonomous marine vehicles (AMVs). This study presents an automated planning strategy for a long-term survey mission using a fleet of AMVs consisting of autonomous surface vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles. Due to the complex nature of the mission, the actions of the vehicle must be of high-level abstraction, which means that the actions indicate not only motion of the vehicle but also symbols and semantics, such as those corresponding to deploy, charge, and survey. For automated planning, the planning domain definition language (PDDL) was employed to construct a mission planner for realizing a powerful and flexible planning system. Despite being able to handle abstract actions, such high-level planners have difficulty in efficiently optimizing numerical objectives such as obtaining the shortest route given multiple destinations. To alleviate this issue, a widely known technique in operations research was additionally employed, which limited the solution space so that the high-level planner could devise efficient plans. For a comprehensive evaluation of the proposed method, various PDDL-based planners with different parameter settings were implemented, and their performances were compared through simulation. The simulation result shows that the proposed method outperformed the baseline solutions by yielding plans that completed the missions more quickly, thereby demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed methodology.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.29-35
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• 2022

When a vehicle is driven off a road surface, the deformations of the road surface and tire are combined. Consequently, the dynamic behavior of wheel movement becomes difficult to predict and control. Herein, we propose a tire test bed to capture the dynamic behavior of tires moving on sand and soil. Based on this study, it is discovered that the slip rate can be controlled, and the vertical force can be measured using a load cell. The test results show that this test bed can be useful for capturing the dynamic behavior of the tire and validating dynamic simulations. In fact, the tire test bed developed in this study can be used to verify the results of computer simulations. In addition, it can be used for basic experiments pertaining to the speed control of unmanned autonomous vehicles.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.183-193
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• 2022

Smart cities are expected to provide residents with convenience via various agents such as CCTV, delivery robots, security robots, and unmanned shuttles. Environmental data collected by various agents can be used for various purposes, including advertising and security monitoring. This study suggests a surveillance map data framework for efficient and integrated multimodal data representation from multi-agents. The suggested surveillance map is a multilayered global information grid, which is integrated from the multimodal data of each agent. To confirm this, we collected surveillance map data for 4 months, and the behavior patterns of humans and vehicles, distribution changes of elevation, and temperature were analyzed. Moreover, we represent an anomaly detection algorithm based on a surveillance map for security service. A two-stage anomaly detection algorithm for unusual situations was developed. With this, abnormal situations such as unusual crowds and pedestrians, vehicle movement, unusual objects, and temperature change were detected. Because the surveillance map enables efficient and integrated processing of large multimodal data from a multi-agent, the suggested data framework can be used for various applications in the smart city.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.299-307
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• 2023

In the midst of accelerating wars around the world, unmanned robot technology that can guarantee the safety of human life is emerging. ERP-42 is a modular platform that can be used according to the application. In the field of defense, it can be used for transporting supplies, reconnaissance and surveillance, and medical evacuation in conflict areas. Due to the nature of the military environment, atypical environments are predominant, and in such environments, the platform's path followability is an important part of mission performance. This paper focuses on reducing the minimum turning radius in terms of improving path followability. The minimum turning radius of the existing 2WS/2WD in-wheel platform was reduced by increasing the torque of the independent driving in-wheel motor on the rear wheel to generate oversteer. To determine the degree of oversteer, two GPS were attached to the center of the front and rear wheelbases and measured. A closed-loop speed control method was used to maintain a constant rotational speed of each wheel despite changes in load or torque.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.93-98
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• 2023

In this paper, the development of an autonomous electric vehicle for logistics with a robotic arm is introduced. The manual driving electric vehicle was converted into an electric vehicle platform capable of autonomous driving. For autonomous driving, an encoder is installed on the driving wheels, and an electronic power steering system is applied for automatic steering. The electric vehicle is equipped with a lidar sensor, a depth camera, and an ultrasonic sensor to recognize the surrounding environment, create a map, and recognize the vehicle location. The odometry was calculated using the bicycle motion model, and the map was created using the SLAM algorithm. To estimate the location of the platform based on the generated map, AMCL algorithm using Lidar was applied. A user interface was developed to create and modify a waypoint in order to move a predetermined place according to the logistics process. An A-star-based global path was generated to move to the destination, and a DWA-based local path was generated to trace the global path. The autonomous electric vehicle developed in this paper was tested and its utility was verified in a warehouse.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.115-124
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• 2022

Welding is a significant part of the construction industry. Since most high-rise building construction structures rely on a robust metal frame welded together, welding defect can damage welded structures and is critical to safety and quality. Despite its importance and heavy usage in construction, the labor shortage of welders has been a continuous challenge to the construction industry. To deal with the labor shortage, the ultimate goal of this study is to design and develop an automated robotic welding system composed of a welding machine, unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), robotic arm, and visual sensors. This paper proposes and focuses on automated weaving using the robotic arm. For automated welding operation, a microcontroller is used to control the switch and is added to a welding torch by physically modifying the hardware. Varying weave patterns are mathematically programmed. The automated weaving is tested using a brush pen and a ballpoint pen to clearly see the patterns and detect any changes in vertical forces by the arm during weaving. The results show that the weave patterns have sufficiently high consistency and precision to be used in the actual welding. Lastly, actual welding was performed, and the results are presented.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.91-103
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• 2022

Determination of sound source characteristics such as: sound volume, direction and distance to the source is one of the important techniques for unmanned systems like autonomous vehicles, robot systems and AI speakers. There are multiple methods of determining the direction and distance to the sound source, e.g., using a radar, a rider, an ultrasonic wave and a RF signal with a sound. These methods require the transmission of signals and cannot accurately identify sound sources generated in the obstructed region due to obstacles. In this paper, we have implemented and evaluated a method of detecting and identifying the sound in the audible frequency band by a method of recognizing the volume, direction, and distance to the sound source that is generated in the periphery including the invisible region. A cross-shaped based sound source recognition algorithm, which is mainly used for identifying a sound source, can measure the volume and locate the direction of the sound source, but the method has a problem with "blind spots". In addition, a serious limitation for this type of algorithm is lack of capability to determine the distance to the sound source. In order to overcome the limitations of this existing method, we propose a QRAS-based algorithm that uses rectangular-shaped technology. This method can determine the volume, direction, and distance to the sound source, which is an improvement over the cross-shaped based algorithm. The QRAS-based algorithm for the OSSD uses 6 AITDs derived from four microphones which are deployed in a rectangular-shaped configuration. The QRAS-based algorithm can solve existing problems of the cross-shaped based algorithms like blind spots, and it can determine the distance to the sound source. Experiments have demonstrated that the proposed QRAS-based algorithm for OSSD can reliably determine sound volume along with direction and distance to the sound source, which avoiding blind spots.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.26-34
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• 2008

The information of traversability and path planning is essential for UGV(Unmanned Ground Vehicle) navigation. Such information can be obtained by analyzing 3D terrain. In this paper, we present the method of 3D terrain modeling with color information from a camera, precise distance information from a 2D Laser Range Finder(LRF) and wheel encoder information from mobile robot with less data. And also we present the method of 3B terrain modeling with the information from GPS/IMU and 2D LRF with less data. To fuse the color information from camera and distance information from 2D LRF, we obtain extrinsic parameters between a camera and LRF using planar pattern. We set up such a fused system on a mobile robot and make an experiment on indoor environment. And we make an experiment on outdoor environment to reconstruction 3D terrain with 2D LRF and GPS/IMU(Inertial Measurement Unit). The obtained 3D terrain model is based on points and requires large amount of data. To reduce the amount of data, we use cubic grid-based model instead of point-based model.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.18-25
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• 2013

Recently the requirement of long-term mobile energy source for mobile robot or small-sized unmanned vehicle is highly increased, and the micro turbine generator(MTG) which is known to have high energy and power density is under development. MTG is designed to have air foil bearing and high speed rotor of which operating speed is 400,000rpm. In the development stage of high speed rotor and bearing, stability analysis for the full operational speed range is essential and the dynamic coefficients such as stiffness and damping coefficients of bearing depending on the rotational speed are required for that. Although perturbation method is usually used to identify the dynamic coefficients, it's not easy to give the perturbation to the high speed rotating rotor. In this study, we present the dynamic coefficients measurement system for air foil bearing which consists of electromagnets, gap sensors, high speed motor and controller. This measurement system can exert the sine sweep force to the rotor-bearing, measure the displacement of rotor and get FRF(Frequency response function) of rotor-bearing. The least square estimation method is applied to identify the dynamic coefficients of bearing from the measured frequency response at the different rpm and the identified dynamic coefficients for the wide rotational speed range are presented.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.149-156
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• 2008

SLAM(Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) system is to find a global position and build a map with sensing data when an unmanned-robot navigates an unknown environment. Two kinds of system were developed. One is used distance measurement sensors such as an ultra sonic and a laser sensor. The other is used stereo vision system. The distance measurement SLAM with sensors has low computing time and low cost, but precision of system can be somewhat worse by measurement error or non-linearity of the sensor In contrast, stereo vision system can accurately measure the 3D space area, but it needs high-end system for complex calculation and it is an expensive tool. In this paper, we implement the SLAM system using a single camera image and a PSD sensors. It detects obstacles from the front PSD sensor and then perceive size and feature of the obstacles by image processing. The probability SLAM was implemented using the data of sensor and image and we verify the performance of the system by real experiment.