• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.167-174
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• 2014

In this paper, we address a task allocation problem for a robot team that performs a search and attack mission. The robots are limited in sensing and communication capabilities, and carry different types of resources that are used to attack a target. The environment is uncertain and dynamic where no prior information about targets is given and dynamic events unpredictably happen. The goal of robot team is to collect total utilities as much as possible by destroying targets in a mission horizon. To solve the problem, we propose a distributed task allocation framework incorporated with effective resource management based on resource welfare. The framework we propose enables the robot team to retain more robots available by balancing resources among robots, and respond smoothly to dynamic events, which results in system performance improvement.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.573-579
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• 2006

Most of the recently developed robots are human friendly robots which imitate an animal or human such as entertainment robot, biomimetic robot and humanoid robot. Interest in these robots is increased because the social trend is focused on health, welfare, and graying. By these social backgrounds, robots become more human friendly and suitable or home or personal environment. The more biomimetic robots resemble living creature, the more human feels familiarity. Human feels close friendship not only when feeding a pet, but also when watching a pet having the food. Most of entertainment robots and pet robots use internal-type batteries and have a self-recharging function. Entertainment robots and pet robots with internal-type batteries are not able to operate during charging the battery. So far there have been a few robots that do not depend on an internal battery. However, they need a bulky energy conversion unit and a slug or foods as an energy source, which is not suitable for home or personal application. In this paper, we introduce a new biomimetic entertainment robot with autonomous eating functionality, called EPRO-1(Eating Pet RObot version 1). The EPRO-1 is able to eat a food (a small battery), by itself and evacuate. We describe the design concept of the autonomous eating mechanism of the EPRO-1, characteristics of sub-parts of the manufactured mechanism and its control system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.338-341
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• 2002

A human-friendly interactive system, based on the harmonious symbiotic coexistence of humans and robots, is explored. Based on this interactive technology paradigm, a robotic cane is designed to help blind or visually impaired travelers to navigate safely and quickly among obstacles and other hazards faced by blind pedestrians. We outline a set of the hardware solutions and working methodologies that can be used for successfully implementing and extending the interactive technology to complex environments, robots, and humans. The issues discussed include the interaction of human and robot, design issue of robotic cane, hardware requirements for efficient human-robot interaction.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.471-472
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• 2017

There are 3,931,822 elderly who receives long-term care at home and 1,704,469 elderly who stay at long-term care facilities in those of 34,610,000 of +65 years old population in Japan; thus, the elderly people who need home care are 2.3 times more than facilities (2016).In the near future, the number of elderly people with a degree of daily life independence and dementia category II or more will increase to 4.7 million (12.8% of the elderly population). Therefore, the use of home-care robots is essential for the disaster evacuation of the overwhelming majority of those elderly who need home care and for of vitals checks to keep family, caregivers, and medical professionals informed to reduce the risk in chronic health conditions in welfare evacuation centers. This also helps to care for the caregivers who are caring for the elderly, and the introduction of home-robots to evacuation centers should receive prompt attention from our care-friendly society.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.1525-1529
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• 2004

Most of the recently developed robots are human friendly robots which imitate an animal or human such as entertainment robot, bio-mimetic robot and humanoid robot. Interest in these robots are increasing since the social trend is focused on health, welfare, and graying. By these social backgrounds, robots become more human friendly and suitable for home or personal environment. The more bio-mimetic robots resemble living creature, the more human feels familiarity. People feel close friendship not only when they feed a pet, but also when they watch a pet having the food. Most of entertainment robots and pet robots use internal-type batteries and have a self-recharging function. Entertainment robots and pet robots with internal-type batteries are not able to operate during charging the battery. So far there have been a few robots that do not depend on a battery. However, they need a bulky energy conversion unit and a slug or foods as an energy source, which is not suitable for home or personal application. In this paper, we introduce a new bio-mimetic entertainment robot with autonomous feeding functionality, called ELIRO-1(Eating LIzard RObot version 1). The ELIRO-1 is able to find a food (a small battery), feed by itself and evacuate. We describe the design concept of the autonomous feeding mechanism of the ELIRO-1, characteristics of sub-parts of the manufactured mechanism and the control system.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.265-273
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• 2015

Children with autistic spectrum disorder(ASD) have a strength in visual process and systemizing, and they show interest toward things and machines. Therefore, robots have been suggested as a useful tool for the rehabilitation of the children with ASD. A robot can attract children's interest and attention, and it can provide simplified social stimulus. A robot can be applied repetitively, and programmed for the special needs of an individual child. In this study, we review literature related to the use of robots for the rehabilitation of children with ASD. For this purpose, related literature was searched with the keywords of autism and robot. We selected eleven domestic papers, and analyzed their contents to identify robots, stimulus of robots, experiment process and dependent variables.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.33-40
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• 2023

As South Korea enters the realm of an super-aging society, the demand for elderly welfare services has been steadily rising. However, the current shortage of welfare personnel has emerged as a social issue. To address this challenge, there is active research underway on elderly care robots designed to mitigate the social isolation of the elderly and provide emergency contact capabilities in critical situations. Nonetheless, these functionalities require direct user contact, which represents a limitation of conventional elderly care robots. In this paper, we propose a solution to overcome these challenges by introducing a care robot system capable of interacting with users without the need for direct physical contact. This system leverages commercialized elderly care robots and cameras. We have equipped the care robot with an edge device that incorporates facial expression recognition and action recognition models. The models were trained and validated using public available data. Experimental results demonstrate high accuracy rates, with facial expression recognition achieving 96.5% accuracy and action recognition reaching 90.9%. Furthermore, the inference times for these processes are 50ms and 350ms, respectively. These findings affirm that our proposed system offers efficient and accurate facial and action recognition, enabling seamless interaction even in non-contact situations.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.835-838
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• 2003

Computer vision and natural-language dialogue play an important role in friendly human-machine interfaces for service robots. In this paper we describe an integrated face detection and face recognition system for a welfare robot, which has also been combined with the robot's speech interface. Our approach to face detection is to combine neural network (NN) and genetic algorithm (GA): ANN serves as a face filter while GA is used to search the image efficiently. When the face is detected, embedded Hidden Markov Model (EMM) is used to determine its identity. A real-time system has been created by combining the face detection and recognition techniques. When motivated by the speaker's voice commands, it takes an image from the camera, finds the face inside the image and recognizes it. Experiments on an indoor environment with complex backgrounds showed that a recognition rate of more than 88% can be achieved.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.2693-2695
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• 2003

Recent advancement in technology raises fundamental questions: "what is right technology for human?", "how can we build machines for human welfare?" Interactive technology and soft engineering deals with these problems. Personal robotics for the elderly seems to be a major area in which to explore these ideas. We can start by asking "what are inhumane human conditions to be resolved by technology?" Issues lain robotics for the elderly are described and desirable roles for the robots in such applications are presented. Interdisciplinary science approach is proposed to successfully implement this technology for the elderly.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.11
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• pp.1265-1271
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• 2011

These days the number of aged and disabled people is increasing rapidly. But most of the disabled or the aged who have the ability to work, want to engage in economic activities and solve social restrictions as well as their bad financial conditions. This paper concerns about the tracking control of an electric wheelchair robot for welfare vehicle where the seat and electric wheelchair are separated and electric wheelchair robot must be autonomously controlled without the help of assistant. So the aged or the disabled people can drive welfare vehicle by himself by adopting this system. Therefore the concept of both an autonomous driving of electric wheelchair and path tracking robots is required in this system. Finally we suggested fuzzy controller in order to control the path tracking of electric wheelchair robot and compared the capability of the proposed controller with conventional PID controller.