• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.951-956
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• 2005

Since a snake achieves various movements just by a slender body, the mechanism of it is very amazing Many researches have been focusing on a snake like robot and have done for it on the ground. However the meander motion of the snake not only can be done by ground creatures, but also can be done by a water creature such as a sea snake or an eel. Therefore, the purpose of our research is to develop an autonomous underwater robot like the sea snake. As an approach to this goal, we develop an experimental sea snake-like-robot for examining basic characteristics, including propulsion, a turning and other performance. Our developed robot is composed of the head and 4 bodies. Each body equips one servomotor, which is operated with pulse signal. In the head unit, 1- chip-microcomputer, which generates the servomotor control signal for realizing a snake motion and the battery, is equipped. Our robot is covered with a rubber film for the waterproof. Using our developed robot, characteristics of the snake-like-robot moved in water are examined.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.486-491
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• 2005

There come various types of robot with researches for mobile robot. This paper introduces the multi-joint snake robot having 16 degree of freedom and composing of eight-axis. The biological snake robot uses the forward movement friction and the proposed artificial snake robot uses the un-powered wheel instead of the body of snake. To determine the enable joint angle of each joint, the controller inputs are considered such as color and distance using PC Camera and ultra-sonic sensor module, respectively. The movement method of snake robot is sequential moving from head to tail through body. The target for movement direction is decided by a certain article be displayed in the PC Camera. In moving toward that target, if there is any obstacle then the snake robot can avoid by itself. In this paper, we show the method of snake robot for tracing the target with experiment.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.661-666
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• 2009

Modular snake-like robots, which consist of series of modules, are robust for failure and have flexible locomotions for environment. However, they are difficult to control and few efficient and various locomotions are introduced yet. In this paper, GA based phase generation and trajectory generation approaches are implemented and compared for locomotion of snake-like robots and extended for analysis for selections of partial modules. In addition, modeling and simulation environments are implemented in Webots simulator and above GA based experiments for locomotion are executed for KMC snake-like robot.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.604-611
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• 2009

Modular snake-like robots are robust for failure and have flexible locomotion for environments, but are difficult to control. Various phase and evolutionary approaches for modular robots have been studied for many years, but there are few comparisons among these methods. In this paper, Phase, GAps, GA and GP approaches are implemented and compared for flat, stairs, and slope environments. In addition, simulations of the locomotion evolution for modular snake-like robot are executed in Webots environments.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.64 no.9
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• pp.1356-1362
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• 2015

Modular snake-like robots are robust for failure and have flexible locomotions for obstacle environment than of walking robot. This requires an adaptation capability which is obtained from a learning approach, but has not been analysed as well. In order to investigate the property of adaptation of locomotion for different terrains, NEAT controllers are trained for a flat terrain and tested for obstacle terrains. The input and output characteristics of the adaptation for the neural network controller are analyzed for different terrains in frequency domain.

• Proceedings of the Korea Inteligent Information System Society Conference
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• 2001.01a
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• pp.65-70
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• 2001

We consider a hyper-redundant system that consists of many uniform units. The hyper-redundant system has many degrees of freedom and it can accomplish various tasks. Applysing the reinforcement learning to the hyper-redundant system is very attractive because it is possible to acquire various behaviors for various tasks automatically. In this paper we present a new reinforcement learning algorithm "Q-learning with propagation of motion". The algorithm is designed for the multi-agent systems that have strong connections. The proposed algorithm needs only one small Q-table even for a large scale system. So using the proposed algorithm, it is possible for the hyper-redundant system to learn the effective behavior. In this algorithm, only one leader agent learns the own behavior using its local information and the motion of the leader is propagated to another agents with time delay. The reward of the leader agent is given by using the whole system information. And the effective behavior of the leader is learned and the effective behavior of the system is acquired. We apply the proposed algorithm to a snake-like hyper-redundant robot. The necessary condition of the system to be Markov decision process is discussed. And the computer simulation of learning the locomotion is demonstrated. From the simulation results we find that the task of the locomotion of the robot to the desired point is learned and the winding motion is acquired. We can conclude that our proposed system and our analysis of the condition, that the system is Markov decision process, is valid.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.2030-2039
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• 2001

Recently, various inpipe inspection robots are developed and its effective values are increased in industrial use. However, it is so difficult to make a inpipe inspection robot system which has flexible mobility and accuracy of inspection in pipelines. Especially, it is very important to know the exact crack position. In this paper, we are to present a lately developed inpipe inspection robot system which can resolve the above Problems. The robot is configured as an articulated structure like a snake. Two active driving vehicles are located in front and rear of the inspection robot respectively and passive modules such as a nondestructive testing module and a control module are chained between the active vehicles. Special feature of the robot system is a ground interface, which is able to show informations of robot and pipelines. By using this, so called virtual map in this paper, user is able to know the pipelines'feature and crack position.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.121-129
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• 2000

The robotic automation in NonDestructive Testing(NDT) is a promising field of research and it helps to expand the applications of NDT enormously. Especially, in the case of pipelines which are widely used in various industrial facilities, it is required to secure adequate ways of inspection in the usual maintenance activitites. In this paper, we present a robot system for inpipe inspection of underground urban gas pipelines. The robot is configured as an articulated structure like a snake with a tether cable. Two active driving vehicles are located in front and rear of the system, respectively and passive modules such as a NonDestructive Testing module and a control module are chained between the active vehicles. The proposed system has outstanding mobility by employing a new steering mechanism called Double Active Universal Joint, which makes it possible to cope with complicated configurations of underground pipelines. Characteristic features of the system are described and the construction of the system is briefly outlined.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.219-222
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• 2002

현재 인간처럼 직립 보행을 하거나 강아지처럼 인간과 함께 공존하도록 고안된 다양한 형태의 로봇이 개발되고 있다. 인간에게 보다 친숙한 로봇의 시대가 도래한 것이다. 본 논문에서는 뱀처럼 동작할 수 있는 뱀 형태의 로봇을 구현하고자 한다. 각 모듈은 수직, 수평 이동의 동작을 할 수 있는, 2 DOF를 가지는 모듈을 구성하였다. 여러 개의 모듈의 동작을 동시에 제어 합으로써 뱀의 다양한 동작을 구현하였으며 시각정보의 입력을 받아 물체의 색상과 물체의 형태를 인식할 수 있도록 구현하였다. 각 모듈에서는 2개의 모터 제어기를 내장하고 있으며, 전체 모듈의 제어를 담당하는 중앙처리 장치에서는 실시간 각 모듈의 모터에 동작 신호를 전달하도록 구성하였다. 생물학적으로 관찰한 결과 뱀의 이동은 이동 지점의 환경에 따라 매우 다양하다. 사막에서의 이동과 정글에서의 이동이 다른 형태로 이루어짐을 알 수 있다. 이에, 본 논문에서는 뱀의 다양한 이동 동작을 모방하도록 각 모듈을 제어하였으며, 전체 동작을 관찰하였다. 로봇의 구현 결과 뱀의 이동시 보이는 다양한 동작과 유사한 형태의 동작을 구현할 수 있다

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.121-123
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• 2009

뱀형 모듈라 로봇은 다양한 환경에 대해서 강인성을 가지고 있고, 모듈 일부의 고장에도 이동할 수 있는 장점을 가진다. 그러나 이동 제어 방법이 어렵고, 아직까지 효율적인 이동법의 개발이 미비한 편이다. 본 연구에서는 뱀형 로봇의 이동제어를 위하여 GA(Genetic Algorithm)기반의 위상제어 방식과 GP(Genetic Programing)를 사용한 임의의 관절궤적 생성 방식을 비교한다. KMC사의 뱀형 로봇을 대상으로 먼저 webots 시뮬레이터 상에서 모델링 및 시뮬레이션을 수행하여 위의 방법들을 비교하였다.