More than 300 Miscanthus accessions as a potential bioenergy crop were collected in Korea and their morphological traits were investigated at various growth stages. Among morphological traits, stem growth habit, the presence of awn in spikelet, and autumn new shoot are the most important key traits enabling to cluster Miscanthus accessions into M. sinensis and M. sacchariflorus groups. Miscanthus sinensis has bunch stem growth habit and awn in spikelet, and produces autumn new shoot, while M. sacchariflorus has scattering stem growth habit with no awn in spikelet and does not produce autumn new shoot. Interestingly, we found several Miscanthus accessions showing intermediate morphological traits. 7 M. sinensis accessions showed morphological traits similar to M. sacchariflorus and 17 M. sacchariflorus accessions showed morphological traits similar to M. sinensis. Flow cytometry and chromosome counting finally revealed 5 Miscanthus hybrids, suggesting that they are resulted from natural hybridization between M. sinensis and M. sacchariflorus. Therefore, these Miscanthus hybrids can be used to understand genetic recombination between these two Miscanthus species and our understanding may support future efforts for breeding new Miscanthus variety with high biomass productivity and environmental adaptability.

Security robot has gradually developed and deployed in order to protect civilian’s lives as well as fortune and subjugate the shortcomings of CCTV which lacks of mobility. We have developed a security robot for outdoor environment and the main purpose of the driving mechanism is to overcome the bumps or projections with high speed. The robot platform consists of 4 omnidirectional wheel-based driving mechanisms and suspension for each driving mechanism. In this paper, principal suspension parameters of outdoor security robot for overcoming obstacles with stability are studied and approximately optimized using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) since it is difficult to find the exact relationship between suspension parameters and the shock, which is significantly associated with stability of the robot, at the robot platform. Simulation using ADAMS is conducted for assessing the feasibility of optimized design parameters.

Miscanthus is a rhizomatous perennial C4 grass and has been studied as a lignocellulosic biomass energy crop in Europe and USA. Although Korea has many native Miscanthus species, however, Miscanthus has never been considered as a potential bioenergy crop and not much studied. Therefore, we collected Miscanthus spp (M. sinensis and M. sacchariflorus) in Korea and overseas and conducted a field experiment during 2008-2010 to investigate their agronomic characteristics related to biomass yield and thus to select genotypes with a high biomass yield potential. The agronomic characteristics assessed are plant height, leaf area, stem thickness, stem density, flowering time, dry weight and so on. Some Korean genotypes particularly collected in Jeju and Gyeonggi showed very high biomass yield, suggesting that they can be used for breeding a new Miscanthus cultivar for biomass production. Correlation analyses showed that plant height, stem thickness and density are closely related with biomass yield. Flowering times vary with genotypes and their collection sites. Phenotypic information of Korean Miscanthus we present herein may be useful for further studies on Miscanthus as a bioenergy crop.