Hyoung Il Son

• PhD
• Professor at Chonnam National University

Early detection of wasp hives is crucial for mitigating their impact on native species, preventing agricultural damage, and improving pest control strategies. Traditional detection methods rely on ground surveys and sensor‐based tracking of individual insects, which are often labor‐intensive, time‐consuming, and prone to errors because of environme...

Incomplete communication networks (e.g., time delay and packet loss/switching) in haptic interaction and remote teleoperation systems can degrade both user performance and system stability. In this study, we hypothesized that human operator performance would decrease monotonically as network imperfections worsened. To test this hypothesis, we condu...

Ensuring water use and food security is essential due to the growing world population and global warming. Agriculture is the largest consumer of freshwater, and attention has been focused on improving water-use efficiency in irrigated agriculture. We propose three-dimensional (3D) light detection and ranging (LiDAR)-based semantic simultaneous loca...

The escalating effects of climate change have heightened the urgency of ecosystem conservation efforts worldwide. In this context, pollinators such as honeybees play a critical role in maintaining ecosystem health. However, they face appreciable threats, including the proliferation of invasive alien species (IAS) and colony collapse disorder. In th...

This paper introduce advancements in agricultural robotics in response to the increasing demand for automation in agriculture. Our research aims to develop humancentered agricultural robotic systems designed to enhance efficiency, sustainability, and user experience across diverse farming environments. We focus on essential applications where human...

This paper introduces an autonomous self-propelled Napa cabbage harvester, designed to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the traditionally labor-intensive harvesting process. The harvester integrates three key modules: a cutting, an attitude control, and a loading module. The cutting module is equipped with an attitude contr...

Nanomaterials associated with plant growth and crop cultivation revolutionize traditional concepts of agriculture. However, the poor reiterability of these materials in agricultural applications necessitates the development of environmentally‐friendly approaches. To address this, biocompatible gelatin nanoparticles (GNPs) as nanofertilizers with a...

Declining honeybee populations can severely affect agricultural productivity and biodiversity because honeybees provide a crucial ecological service, that is, pollination. The Asian hornet or yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina nigrithorax, is a global predator of honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) that has become widespread owing to rapid climate chan...

This study proposes a perception and analysis method for precise aerial spraying based on three-dimensional (3D) deep learning. Point cloud data for water droplets are acquired using 3D LiDAR, and the PointNet++ deep learning model is trained to classify and segment the spray pattern. Spatial-temporal data are processed for the segmented point clou...

This paper proposes a hybrid system comprising multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to monitor nature. The proposed tributary mapping system consists of perception and control systems. A perception system is established for tributary mapping using three-dimensional light detection and ranging (LiDAR) semantic segmentation for surface water reco...

This study proposes a discrete event system-based control strategy for autonomous tributary mapping using multi-unmanned aerial vehicle. When considering the unmanned aerial vehicles as discrete event systems, supervisory control theory is used to model and control individual unmanned aerial vehicle behavior in the system. In tributary mapping, the...

Fruit and vegetable harvesting robots have been widely studied and developed in recent years. However, the usage of existing end-effectors remains a challenge because they cannot be extended to other fruits and vegetables. This study proposes a novel end-effector that can harvest a variety of fruits and vegetables without any additional and complex...

Agricultural multirobot systems (MRSs) are expected to be essential in future agriculture. Therefore, MRSs comprising an aerial robot, a ground robot, and a manipulator are being actively studied for application in agriculture. However, MRSs are still being researched and several challenges need to be addressed. Moreover, no comprehensive surveys o...

This study proposes a backstepping control-based attitude control system for cutting devices to improve the performance of Korean cabbage harvesters. If the Korean cabbage is not cut at an optimal cutting position, the quality of the cabbage deteriorates because of head damage. However, attitude control of the harvester body has limitations in main...

PurposePath planning and coordination algorithms are needed for deploying multiple unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) on a smart farm. These algorithms differ in performance because of constraints such as the number of robots, obstacle configuration, and environment density. Therefore, this paper aims to select the most robust path planning and coordi...

Haptic shared control is used for various remote operations in unstructured environments, but few studies have focused on human-centered experiments. Because the control effort, comfort, and fatigue experienced by human operators are significant factors in evaluating the performance of shared teleoperation systems, human-centered methods should be...

This study proposes a deep learning-based real-time variable flow control system using the segmentation of fruit trees in a pear orchard. The real-time flow rate control, undesired pressure fluctuation and theoretical modeling may differ from those in the real world. Therefore, two types of preliminary experiments were conducted to examine the line...

Small invasive insects cause a reduction or disappearance of native insects, causing biodiversity problems. Therefore, tracking small insects is emerging as a method for biodiversity protection and ecosystem management; studies using tracking techniques, such as harmonic radar, RFID, and radio telemetry, are being conducted. A system using a mobile...

The tracking of flying insects is one of the main challenges in the field of ecosystem and biodiversity protection. In the case of invasive insects such as Asian hornets, extensive considerations must be made in estimating the habitat because of the limitations of available sensors and environmental uncertainty. In this study, we propose an approac...

Path planning is crucial for several applications, including those in industrial facilities, network traffic, computer games, and agriculture. Enabling automated path-planning methods in smart farms is essential to the future development of agricultural technology. Path planning is divided into global and local planners. Global planners are divided...

This study proposes a novel spray drift analysis method, based on 3D deep learning, managing and reducing spray drift using a mobile LiDAR method. LiDAR point clouds were trained to classify and segment spraying forms from orchards using the PointNet++ model, which is a 3D deep learning structure. The trained deep learning model represented an accu...

Highlights Developed the attitude control system of the cutting device to improve the accuracy of Korean cabbage harvesting. The cutting device provides attitude control, allowing precise harvesting. The attitude control algorithm was designed based on sensor fusion. Field experiments were conducted to compare attitude maintenance and harvest succe...

Field robot systems have recently been applied in a wide range of research fields. Further automation, development, and activation of such systems require cooperation among heterogeneous robots. Classical control theory is inefficient in managing large-scale complex dynamic systems. Therefore, a discrete-event system based on the supervisory contro...

The control of large-scale dynamic systems, such as field robots, requires a more modular and scalable approach than traditional control theory. Recently, we designed modular supervisory controllers for field robots in agricultural applications based on a hybrid system that combines continuous-time and discrete-event systems. We verified that the d...

Korean cabbage harvesting lacks mechanization and depends on human power; thus, conducting research on Korean cabbage harvesters is of immense importance. Although these harvesters have been developed in various forms, they have not yet attained commercialization. Most Korean cabbage fields have slopes; thus there are several challenges, that can p...

In Korea, Chinese cabbage harvesting is insufficiently mechanized and automated, and this task is typically carried out using manual labor. Thus, research on Chinesee cabbage harvesters is required. However, the terrain in cabbage fields is generally rough and comprises many obstacles. Consequently, problems such as overcutting, missed cutting, and...

This paper proposes a variable flow control system in real time with deep learning using the segmentation of fruit trees in a pear orchard. The flow rate control in real time, undesired pressure fluctuation and theoretical modeling may differ from those in the real world. Therefore, two types of preliminary experiments were designed to examine the...

Fruit and vegetable harvesting robots have been widely studied and developed in recent years. However, despite extensive research commercial tomato harvesting robots still remain a challenge. In this paper, we propose an efficient tomato harvesting robot that combines the principle of 3D perception, Manipulation, and an End-effector. For this robot...

Multi-robot systems (MRSs) are currently being used to perform agricultural tasks. In this regard, the deployment of heterogeneous MRSs will be essential for achieving more efficient and innovative farming in the future. In this paper, we propose a multiplicatively weighted (MW) Voronoi-based task-allocation scheme for heterogeneous agricultural ro...

PurposeUnmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently been used for remote sensing because they can fly from low to relatively high altitudes along a planned route and obtain the corresponding resolutions. In remote sensing, the limitations of a single UAV become more apparent as the size of the exploration area increases. In such situations, a mult...

Several methods have been investigated to increase the efficiency of the operator in teleoperation, but remote devices still cannot be operated efficiently in the presence of the obstacle. In this study, a virtual link and virtual joints were created within the end-effector of the slave robot, and a shared controller was designed to implement an ef...

Field robot systems have recently been applied to a wide range of research fields. Making such systems more automated, advanced, and activated requires cooperation among heterogeneous robots. Classic control theory is inefficient in managing large-scale complex dynamic systems. Therefore, the supervisory control theory based on discrete event syste...

Nowadays, multi-robot systems are being utilized to perform agricultural tasks. It is particularly essential to robotize pesticide spraying because of the risk of poisoning workers. However, the problem is that the human-driven sprayers are big size, and difficult to maneuver in many orchards. Therefore, heavy spraying robots must be replaced with...

Cooperation among heterogeneous agricultural robots in an agricultural environment guarantees the advantages of effectiveness and scalability. However, traditional control theories for coordination among multiple heterogeneous robots lack a systematic modeling method and a control strategy under unstructured and uncertain environments. To handle th...

For agricultural applications, regularized smart-farming solutions are being considered, including the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). UAVs combine information and communication technologies, robots, artificial intelligence, big data, and the internet of things. Agricultural UAVs are highly capable, and their use has expanded across all area...

In this study, we propose a distributed swarm control algorithm for an agricultural multiple unmanned aerial vehicle system that enables a single operator to remotely control a multi-unmanned aerial vehicle system. The system has two control layers that consist of a teleoperation layer through which the operator inputs teleoperation commands via a...

The availability of additional force cues in haptic devices are often expected to improve control performance, over conditions that only provide visual feedback. However, there is little empirical evidence to show this to be true for the teleoperation control of remote vehicles [i.e., multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)]. In this paper, the co...

This study investigates the effect of haptic feedback on the teleoperation system. The performance of a teleoperated unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) was analyzed in terms of the stability, task performance, and control effort of the operator. The UGV navigation task was performed as a benchmark test for evaluation. The haptic feedback applies a poten...

Radio-telemetry tracking uses a lightweight transmitter and receivers capable of good mobility. This method can be used to track Asian hornets, which have a significant impact on bees and beekeepers. This is because hornet acts as a group and exhibit dangerous aggressiveness. The most efficient way to prevent the invasion of Asian hornets is to des...

A discrete event systems (DES) based approach is an efficient method to control complex dynamic systems. This paper describes a DES which uses supervisory control theory to control multiple agricultural unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Finite state automata (FSA) are used as a modeling tool to design a supervisor to coordinate the behavior of multi...

This study is part of research in the development of robots that can automatically harvest paprika in Protected Horticulture. We designed the mechanism of the end-effector which grasping the paprika and cutting the peduncle, and developed the control device. The end-effector has four fingers to grip, regardless of the size and shape of paprika, pos...

The introduction of multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems into agriculture causes an increase in work efficiency and a decrease in operator fatigue. However, systems that are commonly used in agriculture perform tasks using a single UAV with a centralized controller. In this study, we develop a multi-UAV system for agriculture using the di...

This study evaluates the usefulness of haptic guidance and investigates the effect of inaccuracy in haptic guidance on the task performance. Both position inaccuracy and orientation inaccuracy were considered. The peg-in-hole task was conducted as a benchmark test for evaluation, and a psychophysical study was performed and analyzed on eight inaccu...

Better situational awareness helps understand remote environments and achieve better performance in the teleoperation of multiple mobile robots (e.g., a group of unmanned aerial vehicles). Visual and force feedbacks are the most common ways of perceiving the environments accurately and effectively; however, accurate and adequate sensors for global...

Passivity analysis provides a convenient measure to assess the stability of haptic systems interacting with virtual environments. Passivity analysis of haptic sampled-data systems coupled with virtual environments requires knowledge of parameters of the employed environment model. Kelvin–Voigt models have been popularly used to describe viscoelasti...

We propose a novel whole-body multi-modal semi-autonomous teleoperation framework for mobile manipulator systems, which consists of: 1) Motion capture and whole-body motion mapping to allow the user to intuitively teleoperate the mobile manipulator without being constrained by the master interface while also fully exploiting whole-body dexterity; 2...

This paper focuses on the human perception capabilities for haptic interaction with remote environments. The perception capabilities are compared for two well-known control methods with two kinds of haptic cues. Analytical and psychophysical methods are used to analyze the performance. The first control method aims at maximizing the transparency of...

In this paper, human viscosity perception in haptic teleoperation systems is thoroughly analyzed. An accurate perception of viscoelastic environmental properties such as viscosity is a critical ability in several contexts, such as telesurgery, telerehabilitation, telemedicine, and soft-tissue interaction. We study and compare the ability to perceiv...

Recently, offshore plants are demanded to secure natural resources more and more and it is strongly required unmanned ones for safety of human operators and less running costs. In this paper, a practical multi-user teleoperation system is proposed for monitoring, inspection, operation, and maintenance of the unmanned offshore plants. The proposed s...

We propose a novel semiautonomous haptic teleoperation control architecture for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), consisting of three control layers: 1) UAV control layer, where each UAV is abstracted by, and is controlled to follow the trajectory of, its own kinematic Cartesian virtual point (VP); 2) VP control layer, which modulates each...

For teleoperation of multiple mobile robots (e.g., unmanned aerial vehicles), a better situational awareness of remote environments is crucial for good performance. Visual and force feedback are the most common ways to perceive the environments accurately using a vision system and a haptic device, respectively. In outdoor environments, however, it...

Surgical teleoperation systems are being increasingly deployed recently. There are, however, some unsolved issues such as nonlinear characteristics of the interaction between the slave robot and soft tissues and difficulty in employing force sensors in the surgical end-effectors of the slave. These issues make it difficult to generalize any approac...

In this paper we propose and experimentally validate a bilateral teleoperation framework where a group of UAVs are controlled over an unreliable network with typical intercontinental time delays and packet losses. This setting is meant to represent a realistic and challenging situation for the stability the bilateral closed-loop system. In order to...

This paper proposes an intuitive teleoperation scheme by using human gesture in conjunction with multimodal human-robot interface. Further, in order to deal with the complication of dynamic daily environment, the authors apply haptic point cloud rendering and the virtual collaboration to the system. all these functions are achieved by a portable ha...

This paper presents a new design and analysis of a haptic interface for a gastrointestinal endoscopy simulation. The gastrointestinal endoscopy is a procedure in which the digestive tract and organs of a patient are diagnosed and treated using a long and flexible endoscope. The developed haptic interface incorporates two degrees of freedom (DOF), e...

This paper proposes an intuitive teleoperation scheme by using human gesture in conjunction with multimodal human-robot interface. Further, in order to deal with the complication of dynamic daily environment, the authors apply haptic point cloud rendering and the virtual collaboration to the system. all these functions are achieved by a portable ha...

In this paper, a novel decentralized control strategy for bilaterally teleoperating heterogeneous groups of mobile robots from different domains (aerial, ground, marine, and underwater) is proposed. By using a decentralized control architecture, the group of robots, which is treated as the slave side, is made able to navigate in a cluttered environ...

This paper aims at analyzing the effect of widely known impedance-shaping (IS) control method on the perception of soft tissues in telemicrosurgical applications. The generalized teleoperation control architecture has been modified to include the IS term. New performance index has been defined based on the two proposed indices for the detection and...

A suturing including knot tying is one of the more difficult operations to learn in telesurgical systems. Apprentice surgeons commonly suffer from suture breakage or knot failure. The difficulty, generally, comes from the absence of feedback of interaction force cues in a medical device (e.g., a needle and a thread). Even if there is haptic feedbac...

In this article, an automatic detection and judgement method for macro defects in thin film transistor (TFT) fabrication process is proposed using a high-resolution line charge-coupled device camera as a preliminary inspection method for TFT liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panel. Macro defects are classified primarily into four types. Relevant det...

This paper focuses on scaled teleoperation systems interacting with soft tissues and presents an optimal control scheme to maximize the operator's kinesthetic perception of remote soft environments while maintaining the stability in macro-micro interactions. Two performance metrics are defined to quantify the kinesthetic perception of the surgeons...

There is, practically, imperfect communication network (e.g., time delay and packet loss/switching) in haptic interaction (or teleoperation) systems. It is well known that such imperfect communication degrades teleoperator's performance as well as stability. We hypothesis that as an imperfectness level in the communication network is increasing, th...

In this paper, we investigate the maneuverability performance of human teleoperators on multi-robots. First, we propose that maneuverability performance can be assessed by a frequency response function that jointly considers the input force of the operator and the position errors of the multi-robot system that is being maneuvered. Doing so allows u...

The use of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is increasingly being incorporated into a wide range of teleoperation applications. To date, relevant research has largely been focused on the development of appropriate control schemes. In this paper, we extend previous research by investigating how control performance could be improved by provid...

We propose a novel haptic teleoperation control framework for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over the Internet, consisting of the three control layers: 1) UAV control layer, where each UAV is abstracted by, and is controlled to follow the trajectory of, its own kinematic virtual point (VP); 2) VP control layer, which modulates each VP's m...

In this paper, a novel distributed control strategy for teleoperating a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is proposed. Using passivity based techniques, we allow the behavior of the UAVs to be as flexible as possible with arbitrary split and join decisions while guaranteeing stability of the system. Furthermore, the overall teleoperation sys...

Supervisory control theory, which was first proposed by Ramadge and Wonahm, is a well-suited control theory for the control of complex systems such as semiconductor manufacturing systems, automobile manufacturing systems, and chemical processes because these are better modelled by discrete event models than by differential or difference equation mo...

There is generally a tradeoff between stability and performance in haptic control systems. Teleoperation systems with haptic feedback are no exception. Scaling in these systems used in applications such as telemicrosurgical systems has further effects on the stability and performance. This paper focuses on those applications interacting with soft t...

The availability of additional force cues in haptic devices are often expected to improve control performance, over conditions that only provide visual feedback. However, there is little empirical evidence to show this to be true for the teleoperation control of remote vehicles (i.e., multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)). In this paper, we sho...