Resume

Min Cheol Lee

Office Address

School of Mechanical Engineering
Pusan National University
Busandaehang-ro 63 beon-gil 2, Geumjeong-gu, Busan, Korea (46241),
M-Building No. 819
Office : 051-510-2439
Lab : 051-510-3081
E-mail: mclee@pusan.ac.kr

Educational Backgrounds

Ph. D.

Instrument and Control Lab.
Applied Physics, March , 1991
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
Thesis Title: "A Study on Control of Robot Manipulator"
Thesis Advisor: Professor Nobuharu Aoshima

M. Eng.

Instrument and Control Lab.
Engineering Sciences, March, 1988
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
Thesis Title: "System Identification Using Signal Compression Method and Adaptive Digital Filter"
Thesis Advisor: Professor Nobuharu Aoshima

B.Eng.,

Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan, Korea, 1983

Experience

Oct. 2002 - Present: Professor in Pusan National University
Aug. 2009 - Aug. 2010: Visiting Professor in Purdue University
Aug. 2000 - Aug. 2001: Visiting Professor in North Carolina State University
Oct. 1997 - Sep. 2002: Associate Professor in Pusan National University
Oct. 1993 - Sep. 1997: Assistant Professor in Pusan National University
Apr. 1991 - Sep. 1993: Full-Time Lecturer
Feb. 1983 - Feb. 1984: Researcher, Daewoo Shipbuilding Company

Professional Affiliations and Activities

Member M’98, IEEE
Member, SICE(Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, Japan)
Member, RSJ(Robotics Society of Japan)
Member, KSME(Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers)
Member, ICROS(Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems, Korea)
Member, KSME(Korean Society of Precision Mechanical Engineers)
Member, KROS(Korea Robot Society)
Director, ICROS(Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems, Korea), 2006
Director, SICE(Society of Instrument and Control Engineers), 2013-2014
Director, KROS(Korea Robot Society) Jan. 2011- Dec. 2016
Guest Editor of IJHR(International Journal of Humanoid Robotics), 2014.1 ~ 2015.6
Associate Editor of IJAC(International Journal of Automation and Computing), 2014. 1 - current
Local Arrangement Chair of IEEE IECON ’04
Local Arrangement Chair of FIRA Robot World Congress 2004
Program Chair of SICE-ICCAS 2006
Program Chair of URAI 2010
Local Arrangement Chair of IAS 2012
Program Chair of ICIRA 2013
Local Arrangement Chair of AIM 2015
(IEEE/ASME International Conference of Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics 2015)
ICT-ROBOT 2016 Program Chair
ICT-ROBOT 2017 Program Chair
ICT-ROBOT 2018 General Co-Chair

Awards

2006. 10 Best Paper Award in SICE-ICASE International Joint Conference 2006
2010. 11 Best Paper Award in URAI 2010
2011. 01 Best Paper Award in AROB 2011
2012. 11 Best Paper Award in KROS
2013. 10 Fumio Harashima Mechatronics Award
2017. 12. 21 Paper Award, College of Engineering, Pusan National University
2018. 10. 18 ICROS Best Academy Activity Award, ICROS
2019. 10 Best Research Paper Poster Presentation, ICRAI
2020. 2 Young Author Award, AROB
2020. 10 Best Presentation, ICPEA

Research Area of Interest

Sensor Integrated Robot Manipulator Control
Bilateral Control of Tele Operating Surgical and Rehabilitation Robot
Health Care System
Intelligent Robot Manipulator
Tele operating Nuclear Dismantlement Robot
Mechatronics for Digital Servo Systems and Measuring Systems
Sensor's Application and System Integration
Washout Algorithm Design and Robust Control for Vehicle Driving Simulator
Path Planning and Vision Technology for Autonomous Robots
6 DOF Intelligent Robot Arm Control for Mobile robot
3D Solid Freeform Fabrication System Control in the Office Environments
Stably Walk Biped Robot System Control

My research interests are in the areas of intelligent robot control, autonomous mobile robot, surgical robot, measuring three-dimensional distance and object configuration using visual information, signal processing to identify a system, robust control of a vehicle driving simulator, sensor application, and mechatronics. The abstracts in main research areas are as follows:

Control Areas

The studied and interesting parts of control are composed of sliding mode control, sliding mode control with sliding perturbation observer (SMCSPO), fuzzy-sliding mode control, GA-PID digital control, and neural network control. The dynamic control simulator on off-line programming systems for SCARA robot is developed using the computed torque method and sliding mode control, etc. The controller is designed and made by DSP, TMS320C30. The control systems are composed of the robot manipulator, autonomous mobile robot, servo system, hydraulic system, and driving simulator, etc.

Sensor Application and Mechatronics Areas

The sensor's applications studied are composed of the development of the stroke sensing cylinder using a magnetic sensor, and trajectory control of robot and servo system using a resolver and rotary encoder, obstacle avoidance of the autonomous mobile robot using twelve ultra-sonic sensors. We designed a DSP controller using TMS320C30 and TMS320C50 DSP chips for real-time processing.

Vehicle Driving Simulator Areas

The Stewart platform manipulator is a closed-kinematics chain robot manipulator that is capable of providing high structural rigidity and positional accuracy. However, this is a complex and nonlinear system, so the control performance of the system is not so good. Thus, a new robust motion control algorithm is proposed. The algorithm uses partial state feedback for a class of nonlinear systems with modeling uncertainties and external disturbances. The significant contribution is the design of a robust observer for the state and the perturbation of the Stewart platform, which is combined with a variable structure controller (VSC). The combination of controller and observer provides the robust routine called sliding mode control with sliding perturbation observer (SMCSPO). The optimal gains of SMCSPO, which is determined by nominal eigenvalues, are easily obtained by genetic algorithm. The proposed fitness function that evaluates the gain optimization is to use a sliding function. The control performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by the simulation and experiment to apply to the Stewart platform. The results showed high accuracy and good performance.

Autonomous Mobile Robot Areas

The stereo vision system has been applied to visual servoing of a mobile manipulator. The robot can recognize a target and compute the 3D position of the target by using the stereo vision system. The stereo vision system enables the robot to find the position of the target without additional information while a monocular vision system acquires properties such as the geometric shape of the target. Many algorithms have been studied and developed for object recognition. However, most of these approaches have the disadvantage of the complexity of computations, and they are inadequate for real-time visual servoing. On the other hand, color information is useful for simple recognition in real-time visual servoing. Thus, we propose object recognition using colors, the stereo matching method, recovery of 3D space, and visual servoing. And 12 ultrasonic sensors were used to obtain the distance from the mobile robot to the various obstacles in the surrounding environment. Also, the navigation of the mobile robot using the artificial potential field (APF) was studied. The APF methods provide simple and efficient motion planners for practical purposes. However, these methods have a local minimum problem, which can trap a moving object before reaching its goal. The local minimum problem is sometimes inevitable when an object moves in unknown environments because the moving object cannot predict local minima before it detects the obstacles forming the local minima. The avoidance of local minima has been an active research topic in the potential field based path planning. In this study, we propose a new concept using a virtual hill potential to escape the local minima that occur in local path planning. Virtual hill potential is located around local minima to repel an object from local minima. We also propose the discrete modeling method for the modeling of arbitrarily shaped objects used in this approach. This modeling method is adaptable for real-time path planning because it is reliable and provides lower complexity.

6 DOF Intelligent Robot Arm Areas

A method of compliance control was proposed to consider environmental characteristics. In previous works on compliance control, robotic manipulators typically use force-torque sensors to realize external force; however, force-torque sensors have several well-known drawbacks in the form of cost, size and the complexity they introduce into a manipulator's mechanical and electrical design. So, a compliance control method for the manipulator by using the current value of the DC motor is proposed. The discussion of study is focused on formulation only in static cases. The aim of the study is the compliance of the manipulator and to develop the force control by using the current value of DC motor without a force/torque sensor. Using the current sensor on compliance control can reduce the cost of the manipulator and solve several problems related to force-torque sensors.

Surgical Robot Areas

In typical minimally invasive laparoscopic surgical procedures, the surgeon views the surgical area through an endoscope and display system and manipulates surgical instruments whose motions are constrained by the entry points of the instruments into the body of the patient. The resulting enhanced surgical dexterity may lead to improved patient outcomes and make more difficult procedures feasible. Adoption of robotic devices in standard medical procedures has remained rare until the present due to reasons that may include difficulties of integrating robots into the operating room, safety concerns, high costs, and the lack of proven quantitative benefits from robotically assisted procedures. The use of current commercial robotic surgical systems is limited by their considerable size, complexity, and cost, and their time-consuming setup, maintenance, and sterilization procedures. The development and testing of a simpler, compact, portable, robotic surgery system with equivalent performance, greater ease of use, more versatility, and reduced setup time, would increase the availability of robotic assistance in standard operating rooms and for more surgical procedures. We are developing a laparoscopic surgical instrument control system. The aim of this work is to develop a control algorithm and instrument modeling for laparoscopic surgery, designing of manipulators and analyzing the robot mechanism, kinematic/dynamic analysis simulation and precision control technology, semi-reusable, 4DoF, 5~8mm instrument.

Biped Robot Areas

These days, a biped robot is concentrated on as a service robot. A biped robot has two legs and is adaptable for tasks in a human environment. Therefore, a biped robot can go up and down stairs and across the threshold freely. However, it is tough that the biped robot moves with stability. The problem of the stabilization of a biped robot needs to be resolved. Stabilization is the most important issue of a biped robot. Many researchers have studied this stabilization problem. One possible solution is using accurate dynamic modeling of a biped robot in 2-Dimensions and even 3-Dimensions. Another method to solve this problem is the simple modeling of a biped robot and controlling with adaptive control, intelligent control and robust control and so on. Therefore the ZMP(Zero Moment Point) concept is introduced in this field. However, all of those efforts don’t consider nonlinear facts in real biped robots. To solve this problem, a biped robot should be developed by a sensor-based system.
In this study, force sensors attached on robot’s sole are used to measure the ZMP of a biped robot. The posture control of the biped robot is performed by ZMP information. First, the range of the ZMP is divided, and then the biped robot is controlled using ZMP until satisfying the desired ZMP. According to each ZMP range, reference angles of the thigh and knee joint is changed, and the motor of each joint is rotated. Therefore the posture of the robot is changed, and the ZMP is also changed. Finally, the biped robot controls its posture for satisfying the desired ZMP range even through additional external disturbance.
The result of this study is confirmed by some case of experiments, and the difference is compared between the trajectory compensation algorithm using potentiometer and the posture control algorithm using the ZMP information of the biped robot. As a result, the performance of posture control algorithm using ZMP is better than the trajectory compensation algorithm to control its posture on an inclined plate.

3D Solid Freeform Fabrication System Areas

A pattern driver for a piezo nozzle control of multi-print head in 3D SFFS using UV resin was developed. Various process variables and characteristics of objects through fabrication conditions and method changes were analyzed. Also, an optical hardening process that can reduce the fabrication time of the 3DP process is used to fabricate a solid freeform using the developed pattern driver. The general 3DP process is a method to spout binder directly through printer head on build tray, while the proposed process is a method to cure the jetted UV resin by UV lamp after piezo nozzles jet UV resin using the printer head on the build tray. The jetted resin is hardened soon according to lightning by the UV lamp in the proposed method. Therefore, the 3D SFFS can fabricate three-dimensional objects with high speed without any post-processing.

Others Areas

This project studies a design for a cord blood keeping system to improve the ratio of survival. The cord blood is kept in a cryogenic vessel in liquid nitrogen. An integrated robot control system for the keeping of cord blood based on SCARA robot is developed. The system consists of a cryogenic vessel, software and a robot arm controller using an MMC (Multi Motion Controller) board. The robot manipulator consists of four axes. Each axis consists of the rotation of a major circle, rotation of a minor circle, linear motion of a periscope and rotation of the periscope. The main software has functions of operating task, dynamic simulator, three-dimensional animation, and trajectory planning. To develop a robust dynamic control algorithm, a new sliding mode control algorithm for the robot is proposed. The trajectory tracking performance of these algorithms is evaluated by implementing into the design of a SCARA type robot using an MMC board which has a conventional PID control algorithm. To demonstrate the performance of the integrated system, the proposed control algorithm is applied to the system.