Robotics Books

this is an excellent books for serious researchers on robot dynamics and control. has a serious treatment of all robot terminology, with an emphasis on vector representation of the robotic system.

A 5 Star rating but more for those who want to really understand the nature of intelligence. This is not a bedside book, it is an absorbing trip into the deepest reaches of understanding. Written by a genius, you do have to be a genius to enjoy it. Anyone who plans to get deeply into information management, knowledge management and information management at a level that will blow away the commercial 'experts' should read this book. Better still, but not essential, read 'Brain' (by the same author) first, if you can still find a copy. This is fascination between two covers. Better than an encyclopaedia, heaped with original intellectual thought and combined with the condensed wisdoms from other masters, this is a must read for any budding information expert, especially the aspirant CIO. The parallels between intelligence the way the brain works and intelligence the way any other organisation works means that the lessons are practical and useful. I found it immensely useful in ordering my vision of all variations of information management.

for a practical aproach of fuzzy logic, especially in control applications. It's like listening a discution between two techguys, one guy be an engineer willing to learn more, the other with expertise in fuzzy logic design. The necessary definitions and results of fuzzy logic theory are introduced as necessary in a very intuitive but rigurous mode. The hardware solutions reflect the moment of 1997-98 but you will find all the necessary links to be up to date, any time. In the end you will be ready to test your own ideas and even sell a product.

I find the approach in this book to fuzzy logic interesting, useful, simple, and beautiful. Starting with something like interval numbers is almost certainly the best way to start a fuzzy logic text. It presents a simple example that is very easily understood and allows one to see what differentiates fuzzy logic from other multi-valued logics in an almost intuitive manner.
I have not worked through all of this book. But, while working through the truth table exercises in Chapter 8 I thought 'couldn't I do these on a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Works?' With Bojadziev's formulations how to produce truth tables on a spread sheet (I used Microsoft Works) came almost immediately. (The only real exception was that I had to treat fractional truth values, as functions. Expressly, in Works you type =1/2 in the cell.) To paraphrase Betrand Russell (correct this if I have the author wrong), 'a good notation has a certain suggestion to it.'
Since I did this, I noticed some textual errors. p. 164, (g) reads [~p->(q^~q)]->~p proof by contradiction. This is not a tautology. The tautological form, I think, Bojadziev is looking for is either [p->(q^~q)]->~p, or more likely [~p->(q^~q)]->p. Also, on p. 165 p^(p->q) should not read (1 0 1 0, which is q^(p->q) in context), but
1
0
0
0. Additionally, on p. 267 8.5 (a) for p->~q should read
(0 1/2 1 1/2 1 1 1 1 1).
Still, Bojadziev's notation is the most helpful I have seen for fuzzy logic texts. The notation helped me to think of simpler ways to deal with truth tables. This also allowed me to check many different forms of tautologies and see if they are tautologies in other than 2-value logics. For instance, modus tollens is only a quasi-tautology in greater than 2-valued logics (I have investigated up to 11-valued logics, and no doubt, this could be proven for all n-valued crisp logics). Modus ponens is a tautology for n-valued logics, where n is greater than 2 (at least up to an 11-valued logic, and no doubt this can be proven). This suggests, on a logical basis, that falsifiability is not as strong a criterion as verification. Without this book, such insights would have not happened or would have been much harder.

Many books about "Machine Vision" are just a collection of simple technological issues, resulting in almost no use. But this book is totally different in that it extremely focuses on geometrical aspect of Machine Vision, especially Projective Geometry. Very informative. I really like it.

This is a very well written book on a difficult subject. A thorough study of "simple mechanical control systems" needs a background in Differential Geometry and students are faced with a great challenge in finding good references. Lewis and Bullo take that challenge and deliver this profoundly useful text. This book provides excellent chapters on the relavent concepts in basic algebra, differential geometry and Lie algebra. Then it introdues the simple mechanical systems in a very readable way. Concepts such as the configuration manifold, rigid bodies, kinetic energy, Riemannian metric etc are well explained in a general setting that the reader can draw analogies to Newtonian mechanics in Euclidean space. Book further discusses more advance topics such as Stability, Controllability and Perturbation analysis etc in Part II. Part III discusses design methodologies. There are plenty of exercises in the book and the website is very resourceful with supplementary material. This is a great addition to the collection of books by Abraham, Marsden, Arnol'd etc, and a must have for all graduate students working on this area.

The name Thomas J. Sanders must be included in any list of the best Science Fiction writers of our day.

His newest offering is God's Fire, following closely on the heels of The God Chip Conspiracy, his brilliant debut novel of last year. God's Fire's cast of zany but brilliant characters are actually the ancestors of the heroes of The God Chip Conspiracy, and this story is set in the same universe, but 120 years earlier. No matter though, since time in a Sanders novel sometimes turns around and meets itself coming, and both books can be read as complete stories, and in the order you choose.

In God's Fire, we learn more about the development of the God Chip and its first recipients: Joy, a high-tech love doll and CHESTER, the Complete Human Environment Simulation for Tacticel Emergency Response. Our hero, Galileo Newton Goddard, destined from the moment his name was typed on a birth certificate to become the world's greatest scientist, is the creator of the God Chip. Caught in a squeeze play between the forces or irrationality and love, he confronts the ultimate technological dilemna: Can a man find true love and happiness with a machine?

Sander's penchant for mixing complex scientific thought, philosophical allusions and illusions, with a folksy way of storytelling and an almost bizarre but impressive imagination, make every page of God's Fire a work of science fiction art. You'll be guessing all the way through where it will go next.

If you could merge, or clone perhaps, Asimov and Vonnegut, and sprinkle in some cellular matter from Heinlein, you could aptly name the offspring of that mix Thomas J. Sanders.

I enthusiastically recommend God's Fire to all readers, and especially to science fiction lovers.

This is a book concerning with optimal control. The book starts with the basics of functional analysis, and goes on to the discussion of some linear minimization problem where conjugate gradient method is used as a primary technique. Then it is extented to nonlnear problems for which scaled conjugate gradient technique is used. Finally, some practical problems are solved as examples. I love its style, it is very organized and very elegant. My professor recommended this book saying "This is the best book concerning gradient-type optimization". Especially, this book does not explain the so-called Lagrange multiplier in optimization problem like other optimal control books do. I learned from this book that it is nothing but a trick.

On top of hundreds of fantastic photos the book has game discriptions and prices. Many that are not pictured are still in the price list and described there. The dates of manufacture as well as the maker and the origin. Includes a fantastic history of trade stimulator as a whole, and offers contacts for restoration and evaluation. I need another copy, I have worn mine out!

Many, many years ago I happened to hear an audio tape of Harlan Ellison reading the first part of his "I, Robot" script for a Science-Fiction convention, so when what may well be the most infamous unproduced script in Hollywood history was finally available in print I picked it up immediately. Ellison takes several of Isaac Asimov's classic Robot short stories (including "Lenny," "Liar!" and "Evidence") and weaves them into the life story of Susan Calvin, told in flashbacks to a reporter at the funeral for Stephen Byerley, First President of the Galactic Federation. For example, Susan nows becomes the little girl in "Robbie." Consequently, Ellison avoids the traditional pitfall of omnibus movies, such as "Tales from the Crypt," "The Twilight Zone" or "Creepshow," where whatever is used to link the segments together is of little or no importance to the overall film.

Ellison's introductory essay is certainly not as vitriolic as his story about what happened to his "Star Trek" script "The City on the Edge of Forever," but it does recount the bizzaro world of movie making to explain why this remained an unproduced screenplay. Both the essay and the script are testaments to Ellison's deep personal affection for Asimov and a special treat is Ellison's revelation as to the casting he had in mind when he wrote the script: Joanne Woodward as Susan Calvin, George C. Scott as Reverend Soldah, Martin Sheen as Robert Bratenahl, and Keenan Wynn and Ernest Borgnine as Donovan and Powell. Sounds good to me.

You may come to this illustrated screenplay as a fan of Ellison or of Asimov or most likely of both. However, regardless of your point of origin I think it is important that you have read the original Asimov Robot stories before you read the script. The stories are Asimov's but the adaptation is Ellison's, and you have to know the original tales to appreciate the inspired organization of this script that weaves them together. The artwork that illustrates the screenplay is by Mark Zug, and consists of both full-page color paintings and black & white character sketches that help to flesh out your mental images of Calvin, Donovan, Powell, and the rest of the gang.

The fact that there is a movie version of "I, Robot," starring Will Smith, now available on DVD, simply helps prove the superiority of Ellison's adaptation. Just read Ellisons' script and compare it to what Hollywood has wrought and you get exactly what Tinsle Town is all about in a nutshell. The fault with the movie is that it celebrated action over intellect, and that the story it tells would be better suited for an Asimov Robot story down the road once you really understand the three laws. You will also note that at the start of "I, Robot" the three laws of robotics appear one by one, imposed over bubbling water. The water, it turns out, is not part of a super computer, but it sure strikes me as an intentional homage to the start of Ellison's screenplay. If it is not, then you know full well there would have been a lawsuit coming (cf. Ellison and "Terminator").