한밭대학교

- Developing safety operation control technology for autonomous driving hydrogen fuel cell energy systems

- A remarkable achievement where an undergraduate student led research as first author in a prestigious IEEE international journal

□ Hanbat National University (President Oh Yong-jun) announced that a paper in which 4th year student Cho Yoon-seo of the Department of Creative Convergence participated as first author was published in 'IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics (JESTIE)’, a prestigious international journal of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

 ○ JESTIE is an IEEE international academic journal covering the latest technologies and convergence research in industrial electronics, ranking within the top 30% with an Impact Factor of 4.9 and placed in approximately the top 26% of the electrical and electronic engineering category based on recently released JCR indicators.

□ This paper, titled 'A Hierarchical State Based Control Architecture for Safe Operation of PEMFC Energy Systems in Autonomous Agricultural Robots', proposed control technology for stable operation and rapid fault response of hydrogen fuel cell systems applied to unmanned vehicles.

 ○ Student Cho Yoon-seo structurally separated the normal operation layer and the protection layer, and designed a hierarchical architecture that controls the system based on 6 operating states: standby, preparation, normal operation, stop, fault, and emergency shutdown.

 ○ In particular, stack temperature, current, hydrogen supply pressure, and hydrogen concentration are monitored in parallel across all operating states, configured so that fault protection and emergency shutdown operations take priority over normal operation if abnormal conditions occur.

 ○ The research team implemented the proposed control technology in a microcontroller unit (MCU) based controller with limited computing and memory resources, and experimentally verified it using a 1 kW open cathode polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack.

 ○ In tests gradually increasing the load up to 16 A, steady state transitions were performed stably, and functions such as 100 ms SCU operation, transient fault signal removal, persistent fault detection, and recovery after checking safety conditions were repeatedly confirmed.

□ This achievement holds great significance in that student Cho Yoon-seo led the overall research during undergraduate studies—from control architecture design to embedded system implementation, fuel cell stack experimentation, and result analysis—and developed it into a first author paper in an IEEE international journal ranked in the top 30% of JCR.

 ○ It is a rare case for an undergraduate student to serve as first author in research conducted with professional researchers and publish a paper in an influential IEEE international journal, demonstrating student Cho Yoon-seo's outstanding research capability and growth potential.

 ○ In particular, this study is the result of student Cho Yoon-seo directly participating in the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials' hydrogen fuel cell based autonomous robot development project, designing an energy system control architecture based on operational and safety requirements derived from actual development sites, and verifying performance through hardware implementation and fuel cell stack testing.

 ○ This is evaluated as a case that secured both the practicality of research achievements and applicability to industrial sites by defining problems of actual systems and implementing solutions beyond mere theoretical research.

□ Student Cho Yoon-seo said, "It is very meaningful that the research conducted during undergraduate studies led to publication in an IEEE international journal, and I want to continue researching practical technologies that can be applied to industrial fields in the future.“

□ Advising Professor Park Jeong-eon of the Department of Creative Convergence said, "Student Cho Yoon-seo analyzed system problems independently and faithfully carried out the entire research process from control algorithm design to hardware implementation and experimental verification," adding, "In particular, when faced with unexpected technical problems, the student demonstrated outstanding concentration and problem solving capability in structurally analyzing causes, establishing hypotheses independently, and verifying them repeatedly.“

 ○ He added, "Based on this achievement, I expect the student will grow into an outstanding researcher in fuel cell energy systems and autonomous mobile vehicle control fields.“

□ Meanwhile, this paper was published online on the 12th in the IEEE international journal

  (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11652894)