8 institutes including YU participated with support from MSIT for R&D for 2 years starting last year
9 people including Department of Electric Engineering (and Robotics and Intelligent Machine Engineering) Professor Lee Seok-gyu and graduate and undergraduate students participated
Developed the curling robot ‘delivery motion and communication’ technology development that requires high technologies
[March 16, 2018]
<YU Professor Lee Seok-gyu’s research team that participated in producing the world’s first curling robot>
The ‘AI Curling Robot Demonstration’ hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT at the Korean Paralympic Committee Icheon Training Curling Center (Icheon, Gyeonggi-do) on the 8th drew huge attention. This is because of the popularity of ‘Team Kim’ that won the silver medal at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics while yelling, ‘Young-mi, Young-mi’, which carried on to the curling match between humans and the world’s first curling robot that includes various advanced technologies including AI, which is the core technology of the 4th industrial revolution.
A YU research team was in charge of the ‘curling robot delivery motion control and communication technologies’, which is one of the core technologies of the curling robot ‘Curly (photo on right)’. Development of ‘Curly’, which was funded by the MSIT, was joined by over 60 researchers from eight institutes including Korea University, YU and NT Robot. The research period spans from April 2017 until the end of this year. ‘Curly’ that was developed in the first year includes the delivery robot and skip robot, and this year, which is the second year, developments are being made on the sweeper robot.
The YU research team that participated in this research include Department of Electrical Engineering (and Robotics and Intelligent Machine Engineering) Professor Lee Seok-kyu, Bae Hyun-soo (28) and Yoo Hee-rak (28) in the combined master’s degree program of the Graduate School of Electrical Engineering, Kwon Jae-hyun (24) in the master’s degree program, Kim Yun (23) senior at the undergraduate Department of Computer Engineering, and Department of Electronic Engineering senior Lee Chan-gyu (23), junior Jung Hyun-woo (26), Lee Joo-hyung (20), and Kim Nan-hee (20). They are all members of the YU robot club ‘Power Supply’. Students with various majors exchange knowledge and information at ‘Power Supply’ and enhanced their research capacities in the robot production sector through convergence of different majors.
The curling robot identifies the match situation through the camera mounted on the head and learns delivery strategies based on deep-learning to carry out the match on the ice. When the ‘skip robot’ transmits the match video perceived through its camera, the optimal delivery strategy is computed. The ‘delivery robot’ on the other side of the rink controls the force, direction and stone curl rotations necessary to send the stone to the target. The technology to control the delivery motion of the curling robot and the communication technology for exchanging robots between the robots and with the robot server were developed by the YU research team. As curling is played on top of ice, it has high uncertainties, and therefore, the delivery motion control of the curling robot requires highly advanced technologies. Furthermore, procuring stable high-speed communication technology is another core technology for real-time curling matches of the robot.
Department of Electrical Engineering (and Robotics and Intelligent Machine Engineering) Professor Lee Seok-kyu said, “It is expected that the communication technology and the technology that adjusts the stone speed and rotations according to strategies considering the uncertainties of the continuously changing ice on the curling rink will be applied in other sectors in the future as well.”
