Multi-scale mass-deployable cooperative robots’ is a next generation robotics paradigm where a large number of robots that vary in size cooperate in a hierarchical fashion to collect information in various environments. While this paradigm can exhibit the effective solution for exploration of the wide area consisting of various types of terrain, its technical maturity is still in its infant state and many technical hurdles should be resolved to realize this paradigm. In this paper, we propose to develop new design and manufacturing methodologies for the multi-scale mass-deployable cooperative robots. In doing so, we present various fundamental technologies in four different research fields. (1) Adaptable design methods consist of compliant mechanisms and hierarchical structures which provide robots with a unified way to overcome various and irregular terrains. (2) Soft composite materials realize the compliancy in these structures. (3) Multi-scale integrative manufacturing techniques are convergence of traditional methods for producing various sized robots assembled by such materials. Finally, (4) the control and communication techniques for the massive swarm robot systems enable multiple functionally simple robots to accomplish the complex job by effective job distribution.

Omni-directional robot is a typical holonomic constraint robot that has three degrees of freedom movement in 2D plane. In this study, a new omni-directional robot whose wheels are arranged in radial directions was proposed to improve driving performance of the robot. Unlike a general omni-directional robot whose wheels were arranged in a circumferential direction, moments do not arises in the proposed robot when the robot travels in a straight line. To analyze driving performance, dynamic modeling of the omni-directional robot, which considers friction and slip, was carried out. By friction measurement experiments, the relationship between dynamic friction coefficient and relative velocity was derived. Dynamic friction coefficient according to the angle difference between robot travel direction and wheel rotation direction was also obtained. By applying these results to the dynamic model, driving performance of the robot was calculated. As a result, the proposed robot was 1.5 times faster than the general robot.

This paper presents conceptual design and analysis of the rough terrain mobile robot. The requirement list of the robot is derived to make it possible to deliver small robots and communication equipment to certain place. In addition, detailed analysis of the existing mobile mechanisms is performed. Based on the requirement list and analysis, the proposed rough terrain mobile robot is systematically designed and through extensive simulations, its capability of moving on various rough terrains is successfully verified.

Small mobile robots which use round wheels are suitable for driving on a flat surface, but it cannot climb the obstacle whose height is greater than the radius of wheels. As an alternative, legged-wheels have been proposed by many researchers due to its better climbing performance. However, driving and climbing performances have a trade-off relationship so that their driving performance should be sacrificed. In this study, in order to achieve both driving and climbing performances, a new transformable wheel was developed. The developed transformable wheel can have a round shape on a flat surface and change its shape into legged-wheel when it makes a contact with an obstacle. For design of the transformable wheel, the performance of leggedwheel was analyzed with respect to the number and curvature of the leg, and then the new transformable wheel was designed based on the analysis. Contrary to the existing transformable wheels that contain additional actuators for the transformation, the developed transformable wheel can be unfolded without any additional actuator. In this study, in order to validate the transformable wheel, a simple robot platform was fabricated. Consequently, it climbed the obstacle whose height is 2.6 times greater than the wheel radius.

Smart material such as SMA (Shape Memory Alloy) has been studied in various ways because it can perform continuous, flexible, and complex actuation in simple structure. Smart soft composite (SSC) was developed to achieve large deformation of smart material. In this paper, a shell actuator using woven type SSC was developed to enhance stiffness of the structure while keeping its deformation capacity. The fabricated actuator consisted of a flexible polymer and woven structure which contains SMA wires and glass fibers. The actuator showed various actuation motions by controlling a pattern of applied electricity because the SMA wires are embedded in the structure as fibers. To verify the actuation ability, we measured its maximum end-edge bending angle, twisting angle, and actuating force, which were 103°, 10°, and 0.15 N, respectively.

In order to operate a search and rescue robot in hazardous area, the robot requires high mobility and adaptable locomotion for moving in unpredictable environments. In this paper, we propose the deformable soft wheel robot that can produce three kinds of driving modes; caterpillar driving mode, normal wheel driving mode, legged-wheel driving mode. The robot changes its driving mode as it faces the various obstacles such as a small gap, stairs etc. Soft film and composite materials are used for fabrication of deformable wheel structure and Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) coil spring actuators are attached on the structure as an artificial muscle. Film lamination and an composite manufacturing process is introduced and the robot design is required to be modified and compromised to applying the manufacturing process. The prototype is developed and tested for verifying feasibility of the deformable wheel locomotion.

In this paper, we present a framework for collision avoidance of UGVs by vision-based control. On the image plane which is created by perspective camera rigidly attached to UAV hovering stationarily, image features of UGVs are to be controlled by our control framework so that they proceed to desired locations while avoiding collision. UGVs are assumed as unicycle wheeled mobile robots with nonholonomic constraint and they follow the image feature’ movement on the ground plane with low-level controller. We used potential function method to guarantee collision prevention, and showed its stability. Simulation results are presented to validate capability and stability of the proposed framework.

The measuring of internal defects of objects using the shearography has many advantages. It is a non-contact and non-destructive method and It has a real time measurement speed and no constraints of object shape. Compared to ESPI(Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry), Shearography has a very low error rate by vibration and air turbulence. So shearography provides possibilities of industrial application. In this paper, Image processing algorithm that is measurement of out-of-plane deformation using the shearography is proposed by developed using the LabVIEW 2010 and measurement result of out-of-plane ESPI and Shearography are compared quantitatively.

We present an innovative real-time laser welding monitoring technique employing the correlation analysis of the plasma plume optical emission generated during the process. The plasma optical radiation emitted during Nd:YAG laser welding of S45C steel samples has detected with a Photodiode and analyzed under different process conditions. The discrete DC voltage difference, filter methods and wavelet transform has been used to decompose the optical signal into various discrete series of sequences over different frequency bands. Considering that wavelet analysis can decompose the optical signals, extract the characteristic information of the signals and define the defects location accurately, it can be used to implement process-control of laser welding.

Most research on the inkjet printing technology has focused on the development of inkjet head itself, and of process, not on the landing accuracy of the droplets to a target. Thus, this paper presents the modeling and experimental verification on the static landing accuracy and precision of the droplets from the magnetostrictive inkjet head. A simple model based on the angle deviation of a nozzle tip and on a distance to a substrate is considered, assuming that there is no ambient effect. The angle deviation of the nozzle tip is determined by using its digital image with the aid of a pixel calculation program, and the distance to the substrate is set to 1 mm. Three experiments have planned and preformed. The first experiment is to collect the initial data for the landing distribution of the droplets. The second experiment is to collect the repeatability data of the stage used. Then, these data are used to rederive the equation for the final landing position of the droplet. The final experiment is to verify the equation and to show the calibration results. The respective landing accuracy of the droplet after calibration on the x-axis and on y axis has improved from 338.51 μm and -133.63 μm to 7.06 μm and 13.11 μm. The respective percent improvement on the x-axis and on y axis reaches about 98 and about 90. The respective landing precision of the droplet after calibration on the x-axis and on y axis has improved from ±182.6 μm and ±182.88 μm to ±24.64 μm and ±42.76 μm. The respective percent improvement on the x-axis and on y axis reaches about 87 and about 77.

As the conventional hydraulic power steering system in the passenger vehicles is being rapidly replaced by EPS (Electric Power Steering) system, performance evaluation of the EPS system has become an important issue in the automotive industries. But the evaluation process takes significant expertise since steering conditions in the test protocols must be implemented with high accuracy. EPS HILS (Hardware-In the-Loop Simulation) system is developed together with robot steering system in this study. Main components of EPS HILS system include: C-EPS hardware, CarSim vehicle model, and road reaction force generation system powered by servo motor. The robot steering system, operated by another servo motor, was combined with EPS HILS system to substitute for steering efforts of human driver. The road reaction force generation system and the robot steering system were carefully validated by using the data obtained from vehicle tests. An on-center handling test was conducted by using EPS HILS system combined with the robot steering system. In the result of this study, robot-steered EPS HILS system developed with its high reliability and no need of skilled driver’, can be widely adopted to evaluate any performance of EPS system.

Study of human-robot Interaction gets more and more attention to expand the robot application for tasks difficult by robot alone. Developed countries are preparing for a new market by introducing the concept of ‘o-Robot’model of human-robot Interaction. Our research of direct teaching is a way to instruct robot’ trajectory by human’ handling of its end device. This method is more intuitive than other existing methods. The benefit of this approach includes easy and fast teaching even by non-professional workers. And it can enhance utilization of robots in small and medium-sized enterprises for small quantity batch production. In this study, we developed the algorithms for creating accurate trajectory from repeated inaccurate direct teaching and GUI for the direct teaching. We also propose the basic framework for direct teaching.

This paper presents the structural design and finite element analysis of precision stage based on a double triangular parallel mechanism for precision positioning and large force generation. Recently, with the acceleration of miniaturization in mobile appliances, the demand for precision aligning and bonding has been increasing. Such processes require both high precision and large force generation, which are difficult to obtain simultaneously. This study aimed at constructing a precision stage that has high precision, long stroke, and large force generation. Actuators were tactically placed and flexure hinges were carefully designed by optimization process to constitute a parallel mechanism with a double triangular configuration. The three actuators in the inner triangle function as an in-plane positioner, whereas the three actuators in the outer triangle as an out-of-plane positioner. Finite element analysis is performed to validate load carrying performances of the developed precision stage.

To develop a new nuclear fuel, it needs to make a test fuel rod and carry out burn-up test in the test loop of a research reactor to check the irradiation characteristics of the nuclear fuel. At that time, several sensors such as thermocouples, LVDTs and SPNDs are needed to be attached in and out of the fuel rod and connect them with instrumentation cables. Then, the instrumentation cables deliver the signals measured by the sensors to the measuring device located outside of the reactor pool. In particular, to install a thermocouple in a fuel rod, it needs to drill off holes on the alumina blocks and sintered UO2 pellets. However, because the hardness of a sintered UO2 pellet is 700 Hv (or HRC 61) and that of an alumina block is 1480 Hv, a special drilling machine which adapts a diamond coated drill bit had developed. In this study, several case experiments have been carried out to find an optimal drilling condition of the drilling machine. And, using the optimal drilling condition, minimum numbers of the holes that a drill bit can drill off are verified.

A novel severe plastic deformation process named half channel angular extrusion (HCAE) is proposed in order to produce bulk UFG materials. In HCAE process, equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) and conventional forward extrusion process is integrated to increase the strain per pass and effectiveness of the SPD process. Three-dimensional finite element analysis was carried out to study the deformation behavior of the materials in the HCAE process. HCAE process was performed experimentally on commercially pure aluminum (AA1050) and micro- Vickers hardness test was used to measure the distribution of hardness on the section of normal to the extrusion direction. The results show that HCAE is able to impose more intensive strains per pass and give rise to higher micro-hardness than ECAE.