This study presents an example of creating and optimizing a task sequence required in an automated remote dismantling system using a digital manufacturing system. An automated remote dismantling system using a robotic arm has recently been widely studied to improve the efficiency and safety of the dismantling operations. The task sequence must be verified in advance through discrete eventbased process simulation in a digital manufacturing system to avoid problems in actual remote cutting operations as the main input of the automated remote dismantling system. The laser cutting method can precisely cut complicated target structures such as reactor internals with versatility, but a robot and a pre-prepared program are required to deploy sophisticated motion of the laser cutting head on the target structure. For safe and efficient dismantling operations, the robot’s program must be verified in advance in a virtual environment that can represent the actual dismantling site. This study presents creating and optimizing the task sequence of a robotic underwater laser cutting as part of the project of developing an automated remote dismantling system. A task sequence is created to implement the desired cutting path for the target structure using the automated remote dismantling system in the virtual environment. The task sequence is optimized for the posture of the laser cutting head and the robot to avoid collisions during the operation through discrete event-based process simulation since the target structure is complicated and the volume occupied by the laser cutting head and the robot arm is considerably large. The task sequence verified in the digital manufacturing system is demonstrated by experiments cutting the target structure along the desired cutting path without any problems. The various simulation cases presented in this study are expected to contribute not only to the development of the automated remote dismantling system, but also to the establishment of a safe and efficient dismantling process in the nuclear facility decommissioning.

There is a growing concern on the improvement of water distribution pipeline for multi-regional water supply system in Korea along with its aging infrastructure. Rehabilitation of large diameter pipeline is more efficient in cost and time compared to replacement with trenching. The procedure for rehabilitation are diagnosis, cleaning, spraying coating material, and final inspection. The internal state of pipeline was carefully diagnosed and got C grade, which required rehabilitation. We found that 17,274,787,000 Korean won could be saved after pipe surface coating because of increased C coefficient of Hazen-Williams equation. Optimal coating material was D polyurea. We also found optimal distance between spraying nozzle and pipe wall to be 70 - 80 cm, which were critical factors for coating quality. This study also illustrated the time for spray drying to be more than 30 min. These results could be used in the quality control process during rehabilitation of aged pipelines.

This paper proposes a low-cost robotic surgery system composed of a general purpose robotic arm, an interface for daVinci surgical robot tools and a modular haptic controller utilizing smart actuators. The 7 degree of freedom (DOF) haptic controller is suspended in the air using the gravity compensation, and the 3D position and orientation of the controller endpoint is calculated from the joint readings and the forward kinematics of the haptic controller. Then the joint angles for a general purpose robotic arm is calculated using the analytic inverse kinematics so that that the tooltip reaches the target position through a small incision. Finally, the surgical tool wrist joints angles are calculated to make the tooltip correctly face the desired orientation. The suggested system is implemented and validated using the physical UR5e robotic arm.

In this paper, we propose and examine the feasibility of the robot-assisted behavioral intervention system so as to strengthen positive response of the children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) for learning social skills. Based on well-known behavioral treatment protocols, the robot offers therapeutic training elements of eye contact and emotion reading respectively in child-robot interaction, and it subsequently accomplishes pre-allocated meaningful acts by estimating the level of children’s reactivity from reliable recognition modules, as a coping strategy. Furthermore, for the purpose of labor saving and attracting children’s interest, we implemented the robotic stimulation configuration with semi-autonomous actions capable of inducing intimacy and tension to children in instructional trials. From these configurations, by evaluating the ability of recognizing human activity as well as by showing improved reactivity for social training, we verified that the proposed system has some positive effects on social development, targeted for preschoolers who have a high functioning level.

A main distributing frame(MDF) is an interface unit that is used to connect office equipment cables in a telephone company to subscriber cables. Until now, there is no automated switching system for MDFs in Korea. Manual handling of an MDF has some drawbacks; It is time-consuming, very cumbersome, and expensive. It also makes maintenance hard. An automated main distributing frame system is proposed and commercialized in Japan. In that system, a robot gripper inserts connecting pins into the cross point holes of a matrix board, which reveals several disadvantages in the aspects of space, maintenance, fault tolerance, and economical efficiency. This paper describes a newly developed robotic switch board system for MDFs. In the developed system, switches are placed at the cross point of a matrix board. There is one robot in between two switch units, so one robot deals with two switch units. In the system, positioning the robot, opening and closing switches can be done by using only a pair of motors and a pair of solenoids. The newly developed system is compact in size, reduces cost, and shows high reliability.