Most wetlands worldwide have suffered from extensive human exploitation. Unfortunately they have been less explored compared to river and lake ecosystems despite their ecological importance and economic values. This is the same case in Korea. This study was aimed to estimate the assemblage attributes and distribution characteristics of benthic macroinvertebrates for fifty wetlands distributed throughout subtropical Jeju Island in 2021. A total of 133 taxa were identified during survey periods belonging to 53 families, 19 orders, 5 classes and 3 phyla. Taxa richness ranged from 4 to 31 taxa per wetland with an average of 17.5 taxa. Taxa richness and abundance of predatory insect groups such as Odonata, Hemiptera and Coleoptera respectively accounted for 67.7% and 68.2% of the total. Among them Coleoptera were the most diverse and abundant. Taxa richness and abundance did not significantly differ from each wetland type classified in accordance with the National Wetland Classification System. There were three endangered species (Clithon retropictum, Lethocerus deyrolli and Cybister (Cybister) chinensis) and several restrictively distributed species only in Jeju Island. Cluster analysis based on the similarity in the benthic macroinvertebrate composition largely classified 50 wetlands into two major clusters: small wetlands located in lowland areas and medium-sized wetlands in middle mountainous regions. All cluster groups displayed significant differences in wetland area, long axis, percentage of fine particles and macrophyte composition ratio. Indicator Species Analysis selected 19 important indicators with the highest indicator value of Ceriagrion melanurum at 63%, followed by Noterus japonicus (59%) and Polypylis hemisphaerula (58%). Our results are expected to provide fundamental information on the biodiversity and habitat environments for benthic macroinvertebrates in wetland ecosystems, consequently helping to establish conservation and restoration plans for small wetlands relatively vulnerable to human disturbance.

Over the last years, a number of different path following methods for the autonomous parking system have been proposed for tracking planned paths. However, it is difficult to find a study comparing path following methods for a short path length with large curvature such as a parking path. In this paper, we conduct a comparative study of the path following methods for perpendicular parking. By using Monte-Carlo simulation, we determine the optimal parameters of each controller and analyze the performance of the path following. In addition, we consider the path following error occurred at the switching point where forward and reverse paths are switched. To address this error, we conduct the comparative study of the path following methods with the one thousand switching points generated by the Monte-Carlo method. The performance of each controller is analyzed using the V-rep simulator. With the simulation results, this paper provides a deep discussion about the effectiveness and limitations of each algorithm.

This paper proposes a parking space detection method for autonomous parking by using the Around View Monitor (AVM) image and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensor fusion. This method consists of removing obstacles except for the parking line, detecting the parking line, and template matching method to detect the parking space location information in the parking lot. In order to remove the obstacles, we correct and converge LIDAR information considering the distortion phenomenon in AVM image. Based on the assumption that the obstacles are removed, the line filter that reflects the thickness of the parking line and the improved radon transformation are applied to detect the parking line clearly. The parking space location information is detected by applying template matching with the modified parking space template and the detected parking lines are used to return location information of parking space. Finally, we propose a novel parking space detection system that returns relative distance and relative angle from the current vehicle to the parking space.

This paper proposes a unified framework that overcomes four motion constraints including joint limit, kinematic singularity, algorithmic singularity and obstacles. The proposed framework is based on our previous works which can insert or remove tasks continuously using activation parameters and be applied to avoid joint limit and singularity. Additionally, we develop a method for avoiding obstacles and combine it into the framework to consider four motion constraints simultaneously. The performance of the proposed framework was demonstrated by simulation tests with considering four motion constraints. Results of the simulations verified the framework’s effectiveness near joint limit, kinematic singularity, algorithmic singularity and obstacles. We also analyzed sensitivity of our algorithm near singularity when using closed loop inverse kinematics depending on magnitude of gain matrix.

Recently, development of robot technology has been actively investigated that industrial robots are used in various other fields. However, the interface of the industrial robot is limited to the planned and manipulated path according to the target point and reaching time of the robot arm. Thus, it is not easy to create or change the various paths of the robot arm in other applications, and it is not easy to control the robot so that the robot arm passes the specific point precisely at the desired time during the course of the path. In order to overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a new-media content management platform that can manipulate 6 DOF industrial robot arm using 3D game engine. In this platform, the user can directly generate the motion of the robot arm in the UI based on the 3D game engine, and can drive the robot in real time with the generated motion. The proposed platform was verified using 3D game engine Unity3D and KUKA KR-120 robot.

The localization of the robot is one of the most important factors of navigating mobile robots. The use of featured information of landmarks is one approach to estimate the location of the robot. This approach can be classified into two categories: the natural-landmark-based and artificial-landmark-based approach. Natural landmarks are suitable for any environment, but they may not be sufficient for localization in the less featured or dynamic environment. On the other hand, artificial landmarks may generate shaded areas due to space constraints. In order to improve these disadvantages, this paper presents a novel development of the localization system by using artificial and natural-landmarks-based approach on a topological map. The proposed localization system can recognize far or near landmarks without any distortion by using landmark tracking system based on top-view image transform. The camera is rotated by distance of landmark. The experiment shows a result of performing position recognition without shading section by applying the proposed system with a small number of artificial landmarks in the mobile robot.

Generating motion of center of mass for biped robots is a challenging issue since biped robots can easily lose balance due to limited contact area between foot and ground. In this paper, we propose force control method to generate high-speed motion of the center of mass for horizontal direction without losing balancing condition. Contact consistent multi-body dynamics of the robot is used to calculate force for horizontal direction of the center of mass considering balance. The calculated force is applied for acceleration or deceleration of the center of mass to generate high speed motion. The linear inverted pendulum model is used to estimate motion of the center of mass and the estimated motion is used to select either maximum or minimum force to stop at goal position. The proposed method is verified by experiments using 12-DOF torque controlled human sized legged robot.

Peg-in-hole assembly is the most representative task for a robot to perform under contact conditions. Various strategies for accomplishing the peg-in-hole task with a robot exist, but the existing strategies are not sufficiently practical to be used for various assembly tasks in a human environment because they require additional sensors or exclusive tools. In this paper, the peg-in-hole assembly experiment is performed with anthropomorphic hand arm robot without extra sensors or devices using “intuitive peg-in-hole strategy”. From this work, the probability of applying the peg-in-hole strategy to a common assembly task is verified.