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This paper introduces the investigation of the frontline service employees in order to identify and suggest the behavioral goals of the restaurant service robots. We conducted the survey-based study to examine the optimal service action selection evaluated by the restaurant service employees. In addition, there was a video-based exploratory behavior analysis to find out the different behavioral factors between expert and novice employees in the real restaurant. It was found out that the employees have the preferred service actions to perform in each service episode in restaurant setting and the service behaviors of the frontline service robot in restaurant needed to be designed to be proactive for effective service delivery.

The need for robotic warehouse automation is emerging in the logistics industry because of the risk of manual labor-related employee injuries during truck unloading. The automatic unloading process for boxes in freight containers proceeds in the following order of steps: vision recognition, selection of box to be unloaded, and picking and placing the box on the conveyor belt using a robot manipulator. In this paper, we propose a box unloading sequence plan for robotic-logistics systems. First, it is assumed that the shape of the boxes stacked on the truck is pre-recognized by the visual system. Then, the box unloading sequence plan is generated by reinforcement learning. The performance of the proposed method was verified by comparing it with that of the heuristic method by numerical operation.

As personalized digital healthcare is attracting attention, recognition of data sovereignty has been essential in healthcare data exchange. Dynamic consent is a new approach that patients enable to tailor and manage their consent. It expands patients’ autonomy by giving the right to intervene in the healthcare data exchange process. This study proposes a Coded Dynamic Consent framework based on blockchain. We developed five design criteria to support dynamic consent and represent consent preferences as a coded format. The framework ensures data sovereignty and autonomy of a data provider so that patient-centered healthcare data exchange environment could be achieved.

This paper considers the 3D path following problem for a class of torpedo-type AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles), where only three control inputs (surge force, pitch and yaw moments) are available for its 6DoF (degree-of-freedom) motion in the water. For this typical underactuated system, two spherical coordinate transformations are introduced in this paper so as to transform the vehicle’s path following model into certain three-input-three-output 2nd-order strict-feedback form. On the other hand, for underwater vehicles, due to their complicate and high nonlinear hydrodynamics, it is difficult to extract all of the exact hydrodynamic coefficients using conventional estimation methods such as CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) or PMM (Planar Motion Mechanism) tests. Moreover, considerable noises are unavoidable in the practical sensor measurements. For these reasons, in this paper, a sort of neural-net based on-line estimation method combined with robust scheme is applied to solve the above three-input-three-output strict-feedback form of path following problem. Proposed robust adaptive scheme can guarantee the uniform ultimate boundedness (UUB) of closed-loop system in terms of the spherical coordinates.

Medication errors are one of the problems to be solved not only in Korea but also across the world. To prevent a medication accident in advance, the comprehensive management of individual medication history is essential. Currently, in the hospital-centric Personal Health Record system, if the patient is prescribed medicines at multiple hospitals, he/she needs to go to the hospital where a medicine was prescribed to get the corresponding needs such as prescription or medical certification to record the prescription information on his/her own. Alternatively, the patient needs to record the prescription information on his/her own. This is very time consuming, inconvenient, and even worse, not reliable method because of input errors. Therefore, in this study, we developed Patient-centric medication history recording system using blockchain, which is directly capturing QR code printed on the envelop by drug store based on prescription. All the information are stored using the hash value of the data in a blockchain and it prevents the tampering of the data. In addition, this system adopted Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, which is the international health information exchange standard, as way to improve interoperability.

The amount of healthcare data is increasing. However, issues with unstandardized data formats and the reliability of provenance make the data challenging to share with other institutions. This paper proposes a standards-based sharing framework, SHAREChain, which incorporates two features to deal with reliability and interoperability issues. First, it improves reliability by using the data integrity of a Blockchain-registry and constitutes a Consortium Blockchain Network to share data solely between authenticated institutions. The second feature improves interoperability with standards relating to healthcare data sharing: Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing.

This paper presents the optimal number of sensor and placement in 170 kV $(13.8\ \mathrm{m}\times 3.2\ \mathrm{m}\times 4.8\ \mathrm{m})$ and 362 kV $(15.6\ \mathrm{m}\times 14.5\ \mathrm{m}\times 8.5\ \mathrm{m})$ GIS based on finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The 5 pC discharge using artificial defect was measured according to international council on large electric systems (CIGRE) TB 654. The experiment environment according to CIGRE was simulated to analyze attenuation of electromagnetic (EM) wave in prototype GIS. The reference attenuation ratio (RAR) to detect 5 pC PD was analyzed depending on the distance between PD source and sensor in prototype GIS using FDTD method. The optimal sensor placement was proposed in 170 kV, 362 kV GIS based on RAR. In addition, the channel characteristics of GIS was analyzed and proposed for the target frequency band of the ultra-high frequency (UHF) sensor.

A path guidance method is one of important technologies for autonomous navigation system. The localization errors in structured environments may bring about the path-following error; it can be caused an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) collision with a structure, and the path generation failure. In this paper, the selective guidance method is proposed to solve this guidance problems. The suggested method optionally used both the LOS guidance and steering control in direction of cross-track error. Generally, the AUV used the LOS guidance method for steering control. However, if the path error is bigger than threshold value (turning radius of AUV), the AUV conducts the steering control in direction of cross-track error. The proposed method was verified by comparing with conventional LOS guidance method at real sea environment, and it showed the satisfactory path-following performance near the underwater structure.

We present the power distribution controller for motion control of remotely operated vehicle (ROV) trencher which is named URI-T. The URI-T carry out various underwater construction tasks including burying and maintenance of cable and small diameter pipeline. The URI-T is launched and recovered, and it has to follow and inspect the cable installed on the seafloor during burying task. In this task, we can give some commands with various combination to the URI-T. Moreover, the URI-T does not supply the sufficient flow to the propulsion system because of a lack of capacity of hydraulic powered unit (HPU). We need a controller to handle propulsion system efficiently. In this paper, we suggest the power distribution controller to control propulsion system. We analyze the hydraulic control system of the URI-T, and model the controller. We take a test to verify the performance of this controller in the water-tank. As a result of the test, the URI-T is controlled by various input combination, and the flow is distributed to the propulsion system.

This paper presents a preliminary research on introduction of robot technologies to the work environment of therapists including treatment preparation, management and even therapy sessions. As an initial step, expert interviews, ideation and prototyping were included in a design thinking workshop. The results from the expert interview showed that the therapists wanted technological supports in systematic data collection, easy-to-use and stimulable teaching aid and effective communication with parent. With these needs of the therapists, professionals from robotics group and therapy groups were participated in the workshop to discover technological solutions. In the prototyping phase of the design thinking workshop, the professionals from both groups created robot-assisted therapy with scenario based design. The workshop concluded with the advises of the professionals from therapy group that the expected robot technologies involve expressive robotic platform with autonomous modules in attracting child’s attention and motivating them, auxiliary sensors to gather child’s data installed in the environment, easily customizable software environment to program the robot, and data server for managing and sharing data of children with therapist, doctors, teachers and parents for consistent treatment. This conclusion clearly implies the way of developing robots for children with developmental disorders.

Hospitals provide a considerable amount of questionnaires to patients, and their result data can be one of the significant measures to check a patient’s current health. In many cases, however, such data utilization in another kind of healthcare services is unsatisfactory because patients cannot manage the data by themselves. We propose a blockchainbased medical questionnaire management system for data sharing. This system guarantees the integrity of questionnaire result data using characteristics of the blockchain. Furthermore, data in this system can be in interoperable with other systems because it is generated based on the international standard Health Level 7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources. This paper explores how to use medical questionnaire result data for the lifelong healthcare of patient and better quality of health care services and enhance the security of personal medical records.

Use of robots in socially assistive tasks is dynamically growing. Robot-assisted therapy for children with autism is one of the most popular practical applications. Design of robot-assisted therapy requires intensive effort on close collaboration with experts in the related fields for effective therapeutic interventions. At the same time, in-depth analysis for autism therapy session and theoretical background and careful consideration in easy rapid application are importantly necessary because the end user of robot is autism therapist after all.

This study aims to investigate the effects of information delivery types on users' perception toward the robot. We executed two experiments to explore appropriate information delivery types in each situation. In the first study, we compared which type of information delivery is suitable to the situation that the robot conveys environment states. In the second study, we examined a proper information delivery type in the situation that the robot conveys its internal states. We conducted a 3(information delivery types: speech vs. reflexive cue vs. none) within-participants experiment (N=24) both in the first study and in the second study. The results of the study showed that participants perceived a robot with the reflexive cue as more anthropomorphic and animate than one with speech and one without response. In addition, participants evaluated the service of the robot with the reflexive cue more positively than the robot with speech and the robot without the response in the both studies.

Automation using sensor based target recognition increases efficiency for underwater intervention, but may cause a problem to violate the kinematic limitations of the manipulators. In the paper, the kinematic solution based on the weighted damped least squares is investigated to overcome the limitations: workspace limit and singularity, unintended changes of the robot configurations, and joint limits on position and velocity. By designing appropriate cost functions for each limitation, the proposed method provides the kinematic solution optimized in the manner of weighted norm, even when the manipulators meet those limitations. Through the numerical experiments, the performance of the proposed method is verified.

This paper describes the development of the underwater robot platform for exploration work in the strong current. In order to minimize the drag force as 3.5knots, the platform is designed to have discus-shape outline and the projected area of the platform is minimized. Furthermore, the thruster are deployed symmetrically, which is advantageous for hovering and attitude control in irregular current change. By considering hydrodynamics and structural mechanics, moreover, it is shown that the platform gains sufficient thruster force and structural safety. Manufacture of the platform is accomplished and the performance test in water tank is under preparation.

This study presents an additional investigation of effectiveness of robot exhibition through visitors experience, with respect to the previous research which was performed in the robot museum in South Korea. The survey research was performed in the temporal robot exhibition in Nagoya Science Hiroba 2016, Japan, targeting the local citizen who are most of the visitors of the exhibition. Sociability, social attraction and negative attitude toward robots were measured to analyze change of the perception about robots through visiting experience. The results showed that sociability and social attraction were significantly changed after experiencing robot exhibitions. However, the negative attitude showed no significant change. It was confirmed that sociability was changed through the visiting experience similar to the robot museum case. However, the social attraction was a significantly increased, and the negative attitude had no significant change, different with the result in the robot museum. It is supposed that since the robot exhibition provided much communicative opportunities to the visitors than the robot museum, the social attraction showed a significant change rather than the robot museum. Also, it is assumed that the cultural aspect in Japan, where robot is widely exposed to the public at present, affected no significant perceptual change on the negative attitude towards general robots.

A visualization algorithm for efficiently expressing spatial information based on web map services is developed in this research. Spatial information has a limited ability for expressing the desired information not only because it requires considerable time to express itself through a map as it is composed of complex points such as lines and polygons, but also because it has to utilize an OpenAPI that has a limitations in web map services. Therefore, the visualization method suggested in this research opens and imports only a partial data of the desired area, and it expresses the expanded data through the event detections of client-based map movements. As a result, the time required for an expression could be reduced; thus, it is ascertained that this method will be efficient for system I/O's also, because it does not import unnecessary information.

This study presents an initial investigation of effectiveness and service quality of robot museum through visitors experience. The survey research was performed in RoboLife Museum in South Korea, targeting teenagers who are most of the visitors of the museum. Impression, intimacy and attitude toward robots were measured to analyze change of the perception about robots through visiting experience. The results showed that impression and attitude were significantly changed after viewing robot exhibitions. However, intimacy showed no significant change. It was considered that impression and attitude can be affected by a single occasional experience, but intimacy needs actual interactions between visitors and robots such as making a short conversation or playing games together. The service quality, customer's satisfaction and loyalty were further investigated. The overall evaluation for the service provided by RoboLife museum was highly scored.

This paper considers the initial alignment problem for underwater robot's strapdown inertial navigation system. In general, initial alignment can be roughly divided into three types; coarse alignment, gyro compassing, and aided alignment. For underwater robot, gyro compassing is not suitable for its initialization, since it is difficult to accurately rotate the robot platform in the water. In this paper, we evaluate and compare the other two methods - coarse alignment and aided method, and investigate which one is more suitable in practice for a given IMU device.

This paper introduces dynamic characteristics of the developed harmonic reduction gear, namely KCSF-20 through the vibrational and structural analysis. Considering the modal testing, the developed harmonic gear was evaluated by comparing with THK product, CSF-20. The Campbell diagram was an useful tool to diagnose fault cases through analysing the vibrational characteristic of the harmonic reduction gear.

Robot assisted therapy for patients with autism is promising, but there is a need for well designed studies that combine expert knowledge from the field of robotics and autism. Here, an iterative, participatory design process of robot assisted Pivotal Response Training (PRT) for autism therapy is presented. The scenarios for the robot assisted PRT intervention were created using a scenario based design approach through intensive collaboration between robot engineer and therapist. The developed scenarios were then represented in a hierarchical model using Activity Theory. Based on that model, the PRT intervention was implemented by the end-user programming software and evaluated with a child with autism. The scenario based design and the use of Activity Theory framework considerably speeded up the scenario creation process and the redesign time needed between the pilots compared to our previous experiments.

In this paper, the de-noising filter study of the sound-source using the DWT is introduced. We suggest the de-noising filter using the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The DWT has been performed to remove out the noises from the signals. In order to confirm the performance of suggested filtering algorithm, we estimate the distance and angle from the microphone to the sound-source and compare the filtered signal to the original signal. To calculate the distance and angle, we use the cross-correlation that is possible to estimate the time difference for sound waves reaching more than two sound-source obtaining devices. Also, through the sound-source obtaining devices and carrying out the geometric interpretation, the location of each sound-source can be found.

Research in uptake and actual use of robots in socially assistive tasks is rapidly growing. However, practical applications lack behind due to the enormous effort to create meaningful behaviours. This paper describes a rapid prototyping framework for robot-assisted training of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The main goal of this research is to provide a framework which translates the knowledge from the evidenced Pivotal Response Training to end-user tools, that allow therapists to program/adapt a training program mediated by a robot in order to use it in therapies. The overall structure of the intervention is based on Activity Theory which makes it easy to properly arrange robot actions and decisions. We appended a general end-user robot programming tool with PRT therapy-specific training structures which can be adapted with ease to create almost limitless learning opportunities utilizing a range of training scenarios or games. Pilot tests with children with ASD were performed to assess whether the robot assisted intervention created by this framework is ready for practical use. These showed that only minor adaptations were needed to increase the fluency of the robot-child interaction.

One of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)' major characteristics is the lack of social communication and interaction with other people. Recently, some research studies have examined robot-based interventions for children with ASD. In line with those studies, the present paper introduces our ongoing research on robot-mediated imitation training for children with ASD. In this paper, we focus on designing human-robot interaction for autism intervention whereas previous studies largely focused on developing robots for intervention. Several human-robot interaction scenarios for robot-mediated imitation training were developed with emphasis on facilitating communication between a child and a therapist. Two main concepts (triadic interaction and reciprocal imitation training) were adopted and modified to increase the efficacy of the intervention. The developed interaction scenarios described how a robot can be integrated into the clinical sessions and the requirements for a robot. The field trials for examining the efficacy of robot-mediated imitation training will be carried out.

Due to the increasing demands for spectrum resource, a method for the efficient use of frequency for wireless communications is required. In dynamic spectrum access, secondary users (SUs) temporary use the frequency when the licensed spectrum is not occupied by the primary users. To exchange control and data messages between SUs, common channels between them should be established first. In the most of previous cognitive radio ad-hoc network researches, it is assumed that there exists a predetermined common channel. However, in real environments, it has some problems such as jamming attack and traffic concentration on the dedicated common channel. In this paper, we propose a cluster-based reliable dynamic common channel setup method for ad-hoc DSA networks. Without any predetermined channel, we dynamically setup common channels based on the each node's channel availability. In the simulation, performance of the proposed method in terms of response failure rate, setup delay and cluster join probability is evaluated.

This paper presents how human interprets robot intention by its verbal and nonverbal communication in poker game. A poker playing robot to socially interact with humans should exhibit intentionality in the sense that it makes the human believe that it has beliefs, desires and intentions. The experiment was designed to measure the interpreted intention and perceived emotion according to the role of nonverbal behaviors, which means substitution, complementation and contradiction for verbal messages. The result showed significant effects of the robot nonverbal behavior in mixed communication with verbal messages. The robot nonverbal behaviors can substitute their corresponding verbal messages. Its nonverbal behaviors complement the verbal messages meaning that participants perceived these communications are congruence. In the case of contradiction, the participants recognized the contradictory nonverbal behaviors as incongruence.

Even though many studies have dealt with the common channel issues, the detailed procedures for common channel configuration have not been paid much attention. In this paper, the fast and reliable dynamic common channel setup and reconstruction method for the point-to-point communications in DSA networks is proposed. The detailed time parameters for common channel setup and reconstruction, such as the request-response exchange time, channel request waiting time, and rendezvous time, are taken into consideration. Through the numerical analyses, the delay and throughput performance of the proposed method is evaluated. A variant of the proposed method is also presented, which delay performance is compared with the proposed one.

A 40 nm CMOS analog front end (AFE) supporting HSPA/EDGE multimedia and enhanced audio applications is reported. The AFE consists of hi-fi audio and high-performance peripheral and auxiliary subsystems. Circuit techniques that enable a 200 μA audio RX path and a Class-AB driver with −80 dB THD are discussed. Audio playback and capture paths achieve 105 dB and 85 dB SNR, respectively.

In 10-bit 50 MS/s pipelined ADC is presented. A 25 dB open loop dc gain amplifier is employed in the MDAC operation. The low opamp dc gain in the extreme is tolerated due to the use of a reference scaling scheme in conjunction with a background offset calibration. An intermediate gain stage is inserted into the pipeline to compensate for the accumulated reduction of reference and signal swing. The prototype IC implemented in a 90 nm CMOS process achieves -63.2 dB THD, 48.8 dB SNR, and 48.6 dB SNDR, while consuming 8 mW from a 1 V supply.

In the field of HRI, to take advantage of peoplepsilas innate ability of communication, researchers have thus far concentrated on facial expression in facilitating human robot communication. However, for the robot to express emotional intensity, other modalities such as gestures, movement, sound, and color are also needed. This paper suggests that the intensity of emotion can be expressed with color and blinking, which are applicable on robots via LED. Although color and emotion have certain relations, it is difficult to implement the findings of previous research in this area due to a lack of quantitative data. In this paper, we determined RGB values of color and blinking period to effectively express intensities of six basic emotions based on quantitative data. Color and blinking are implemented on an avatar and the intensities of emotions are evaluated through surveys with the avatar. It was found that color and blinking helped the avatar express emotional intensity of surprise, happiness, disgust, and anger. For fear, and sadness, the color and blinking did not play a significant role.

Recently, in the field of HRI, multimodal expression has been an issue. Synchronizing modalities and determining what modality to use are important aspect of multimodal expression. For example, when robots express emotional states, they may use only facial expressions or facial expressions with gestures, neck motions, sounds, etc. In this paper, emotional boundaries are proposed for multimodal expression in a three-dimensional affect space. The simultaneous expression of facial expression and gestures was demonstrated using proposed emotional boundaries on a simulator.

A 10b 30MS/s pipelined ADC using fully-differential switched-RC multiplying digital-to-analog converter (MDAC) is presented. It utilizes a resistive loop to reset the feedback capacitor in the MDAC without using the floating switch. The measured differential and integral nonlinearities of the prototype IC fabricated in a 0.13mum CMOS process are less than 0.54 LSB and 1.75 LSB respectively. The prototype ADC achieves 51.6dB SNARED and 65.9dB SFDR with IV supply while consuming 17mW power.

A 12b 10MS/s pipelined ADC using reference scaling achieves 62 dB SNDR and 72 dB SFDR for a 1MHz input. The prototype IC fabricated in a 0.35mum CMOS process employs interstage amplifiers with 45dB open-loop gain and consumes 19mW from a 2.4V supply

A 10Ms/s 11-b algorithmic ADC with an active area of 0.19mm2 is presented. Using an improved clocking scheme, this design overcomes the speed limit of algorithmic ADCs. The proposed ADC employs amplifier sharing, DC offset cancellation, and input memory effect suppression to reduce area and power, and achieve high linearity. The ADC implemented in a 0.13mum thick gate-oxide CMOS process achieves 69dB SFDR, 58dB SNR, and 56dB SNDR, while consuming 3.5mA from 3V supply

A 0.9V third-order 1.5bit delta-sigma ADC with simple dynamic element matching (DEM) is presented. A fully-differential low-voltage double-sampling structure avoids use of clock boosting or bootstrapping. It operates from 0.65V to 1.5V supply with minimal performance degradation. The prototype IC implemented in a 0.13mum CMOS process achieves 92dB DR, 91dB SNR and 89dB SNDR, while consuming 1.5mW from a 0.9V supply

An improved algorithmic ADC clocking scheme is presented. Using an optimized clock generator, a significant improvement in conversion speed is achieved in the converter. This proposed optimized clock generator removes the wasted time which exists during all conversion cycles except for the first one. This technique can improve the conversion speed up to 82% compared to conventional algorithmic ADCs. Alternatively, static power consumption can also be reduced for a given conversion speed. An algorithmic ADC using the new clocking scheme is validated using MATLAB behavioral simulations.

A complete VDSL CAM transceiver including ADC, DAC, clock generator, and micro-controller interface, fabricated in 0.18/spl mu/m 1P 6M CMOS technology is described. A new IIR notch filter and dual loop AGC are incorporated in the design. Total power consumption is 300mW and the IC supports a 13Mb/s data rate over a 9000 ft distance with a BER < 10/sup -7/.