Robotics Books

I overall liked the book. Mainly geared towards a beginner to intermediate techy. Had some good info on sources of parts and advantages and disadvantages of particular materials and methods. If you are looking at the where to start to get the foundation for your bot look here.

This book is a must read for anyone who is serious about the future of Robotics and how these biomechanical devices will interact with us.

The book is well structured, and includes many photos and diagrams. I found it useful because I work exactly on the same topic. However, most of its content can be found elsewhere (in published articles). The accompanying CD-ROM includes very interesting videos, although I think they can also be found elsewhere. In summay, I definitely recommend this book, but only if you are really interested in the topic and/or in Kismet, and you want to know as many details as you can.

The authors of this book are very ambitious in their goals, for in the book they attempt to outline in some detail how to design a machine that is not only intelligent but can function in more than one domain. A machine that could not only beat the world champion at chess but could also create food recipes would be an example of a machine that can think in more than one domain. Certainly one would view such a machine as intelligent, at least from a qualitative standpoint, without having an explicit way of measuring intelligence.

The authors actually define intelligence as an ability to behave appropriately in an uncertain environment, i.e. an entity that is intelligent will engage in behavior that maximizes the likelihood of success in the achievement of its goals. With this definition, they hope to capture the intelligence of many different entities, both biological and otherwise. Intelligence is not to be defined as an either/or proposition, but instead is graded, and there are many examples of it in systems in the real world, both natural and man-made. Intelligence can therefore exist in degrees, these being determined by the computational power and memory capacity of the brain of the machine, the processes the machine uses for obtaining data from the environment, and the quality of the data stored in memory. Different levels of intelligence, the authors believe, produce different probabilities of success in achieving goals. They do not give explicit examples of how these probabilities vary with the levels however. It would be very interesting to see these examples worked out in detail, for it would give the reader a more quantitative (and useful) notion of "machine IQ."

One area of discussion that particularly stands out in the book deals with knowledge representation. Instead of representing everything symbolically via logical theorems, expert system rules, or linguistic grammars, the authors explicitly reject the symbol manipulation systems and instead want to represent knowledge using images or maps. This is interesting because of the high computational demands placed on a machine in performing image processing. The authors are aware of this, and so propose using parallel computation in the image and map domains combined with doing analysis in time and frequency space. This is to be done in a "multilevel architecture of dynamic recursive loops." Most of the book is devoted to explaining how to engineer this architecture. Heavy use is made of control theory to do this.

The authors recognize that much remains unknown about the nature of intelligent behavior, but that the concept of a "goal" is central to ascribing intelligence to an entity. The greater the intelligence of an entity the more ingenious the entity is in dealing with unexpected events or challenges, and predicting the future is an ability possessed by the most intelligent entities. The rather extreme view of intelligence as expressed in this last statement is of course a logical consequence of the author's assertions. Needless to say, no example of an entity that can predict the future is given in the book.

Since goal seeking is an essential characteristic of an intelligent machine, then the machine has to be able to make plans in order to reach its goals. The authors outline discuss two approaches to implementing a planning architecture. One of these is computationally expensive and involves frequently replanning, in order to deal with unpredictability of the environment. The other approach is to use feedback from sensors in order that the planned actions can be modified as needed. The authors outline several different heuristics that could be used to search for plans, and settle on a notion of `hierarchical multiresolutional planning'. This type of planning involves partitioning the planning process into hierarchical layers so that the search space is effectively reduced at each level of the planning hierarchy.

In order for the authors to convince the reader that their efforts will be fruitful in designing an intelligent machine, they devote over two-thirds of the book to the real-world construction of such a machine. This is done by first discussing a reference model architecture, called RCS (for Real-Time Control System), that expresses their computational model of intelligence. The believe that the RCS architecture will allow the eventual design of intelligent machines that can meet specified requirements. Again, their project is very ambitious, due to the many capabilities that the RCS architecture must have. Without observing the machine actually working it would be difficult to verify whether or not they authors have succeeded in their goals. They do however give detailed explanations of the architecture, including line drawings and relevant mathematics, making their approach seem highly plausible. In addition, they give examples involving unmanned military ground vehicles that illustrate the principles they have outlined.

The last chapter of the book is a look toward the future, and the authors, like all others who work in artificial intelligence, feel obligated to address the anxiety felt by some regarding the development of intelligent machines. Hollywood and popular literature is replete with examples of malevolent machines bent on the destruction of humankind or at least taking employment opportunities away from humans. The authors though remain refreshingly optimistic and rightfully dismiss these Hollywood/literary fantasies. They argue well for the productivity gains and positive social impact of intelligent machines. One can confidently look forward to the presence of millions of artificial intelligent machines in the twenty-first century, some of the architectures of which may be similar to the ones that are delineated in this book.

Engineering of Mind is a fresh and exciting vision of the emerging science of machine intelligence. It begins with a readable introduction to the scientific analysis of the mind and brain. It then presents an overview of current research in the neurosciences, artificial intelligence, control theory, and robotics, and suggests an engineering approach to the design of intelligent machines. Finally, it addresses the scientific, economic, military, and human implications of a creating a new species of intelligent creatures. This is a seminal work of great importance.

I bought and read this book when I first became a grad student under Dorato and Abdallah. Since I've now graduated and am employed elsewhere (and thus can't be accused of sucking up), this is an excellent book that should be recommended reading, if not the primary textbook, for all graduate level LQG courses.

a will "briefly" written book which assumes that the reader has the basics of feedback control and matrix algebra. Each chapter has a MATLAB section at the end which shows some important commands (not codes) that are relevant to the chapter's material. Excellent chapter on robstness design.

Edwards does the reader a great service by going into why decisions are made. For example, Edwards leads you through the choice of which PC motherboard he was going to use for the project. His decisions and considerations were very insightful to me. Although the board(s) selected are now out of date according to the manufacturers, using his process will enable you to find motherboards to be able to handle the tasks in the book. Next, Edwards leads you through setting up Linux using BusyBox and how to divide the system up using a compact harddrive and a CompactFlash. All in all, while I consider myself an expert linux user, I found his coverage of material very interesting. Another keeper for my robotics bookshelf.

Edwards claims that his book is the first on using open source software to build robotic systems. The aim is to reduce the cost, as compared with using a commercial real time operating system. Hitherto, the latter has been the choice of many robotics designs.

He puts a lot of detail into the text, of how to use linux as the embedded operating system in the robot. To address the issue of whether linux is up to the demands of real time running. The ideal reader should be proficient both in linux device drivers and in constructing robots. The text is probably not ideal for someone new to either field.

To motivate the reader, Edwards provides several examples of functionalities to be built into the robots. Like being able to use GPS, which sounds quite neat.

I like the book a lot. I want to get additional information about the PaPeRos in page 31 of this book.

Please reply.

Rafael M. Saavedra

Robots by Clive Gifford is a complete science lesson on Robots compiled into one book. Topics included in the book are What are Robots, Robot Arms, and various type of robots. This book will teach children lots of great information about robots. Children will see how robots are used in space, to help doctors, and how robots are used in space.

I like the hands on projects that were in the back of the book. These would make great projects to share with friends.

I would recommed this book for kids ages 9-12. I feel that mostly boys will enjoy this book. They seem to be more into robots than girls most of the time.

1. P2 robot was developed over 10 years at a cost of $100 million. Its successor is Asimo with the ability to walk, run, turn, greet, and deliver a coffee tray.

2. The Marsokhod rover has six wheels on movable axles allow it to climb over rocks 1.5 times the height of its deeply ridged conically shaped wheels.

3. In the USA, Sandia National Laboratories has a hopper in a plastic shell the size of a grapefruit. Using a built-in compass and a gimbal mechanism with a moveable weight, it cal roll around to right itself after each jump. A small internal combustion engine with enough fuel for about 4,000 hops drives a piston into the ground, generating a leap three fee and six feet forward.

4. The Nagoya brachiator has 14 motors controlling a fully articulated body. A separate stereo-canera setup connected to a computer determines where the brachiator's arms are, updated 60 times per second. Using basic equations for swinging and knowledge of distance between handholds the Brachiators is able to swing between branches.

5. Alan DiPietro of iRobot has created robot gecko feet allowing the robot to walk up a wall. The German MAKRO Project of 1997-2000 developed a multisegment robot to inspect the interior of sewerage pipes. The snake-like robot could travel down the pipe autonomously and was seen as a cheaper and much more effective way of carrying out inspections. Shigeo Hirose built a simple snakebot with serpentine motion by placing wheels under each modular section. Snakebot II developed by Mark Yim incorporated some autonomous behavior.

6. David Barret, in 1995, built a robot tuna. Controlled by six servo motors each rated at 2 horsepower, it had force sensors at various locations along the path of its controlling tendons. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries built a robotic sea bream, in which the tail fin and two pectoral fins and controlled by desktop computer giving the robotic fish a top speed of 0.82 feet per second.

7. iRobot is interested in creating a legged robot that can scuttle along the bed of a river or lake, a robotic crab with possible uses for detecting mine detection.

8. Lucy by Steve Grand does have a lot of knowledge, but the designer of the robot claims it has the ability to mimic, "Many people still think of the brain as a passive receptor of information. I think of perception as a much more active process. As conscious beings, we don't live in a real-world-we live in a virtual world inside our heads. Most of the time this internal world is closely synchronized to the external world-our model matches reality, tracks it, and predicts it. When we dream or when we image things, we disconnect from the real world and let the model run on its own. Although the same mechanism are at work in both cases, the synchronization with reality is missing when we dream or think. The model is the crucial thing: perception is an active process, in which we use this model to predict, hypothesize about, and correct data fed in by our senses-filling in details when the data is incomplete and being surprised when reality fails to live up to the model."

9. Smelly, a University of Portsmouth robot has two tubes containing a smell sensor sensitive to alcohol. The sensor is connected to a bridge circuit and its resistance changes when an organic compound is absorbed by the sensor film, allowing the concentration to be measured. Hiroshi Kobayashi uses electric actuators beneath robot skin to create the appearance of facial expressions. The actuators are made from shape memory alloys, metals which are easily deformed when the current is flowing and returns to its original shape when the current stops.

10. Stirling Cricket uses ANN to control its movements and behave similarly to a female cricket seeking a mate. Female crickets home in on males by listening to their chirping song. Sound reaches a crickets eardrums-located on its forelegs-both directly and via internal tubes. When the robot hears a sound from its right a signal passes down to its motor via the right-hand neurons, at the same time inhibiting the passage of any signal from the left-hand neurons, and the robot cricket moves toward the source. Pine Labs have pioneered a method of sitting cultured neurons on multi-electrode substrates - 60 electrodes made of the transparent conductor indium-tin oxide on a glass substrate-allowing their electrical activity to be monitored. A gas-permeable membrane made of Teflon protects the cultured neurons and allows them to be kept alive for two years or more. Steven Potter has connected the neurons to an animat, a simulated mouse moving around a virtual maze in 3-D graphical environment. Electrical signals from the neurons are picked up by the electrodes and converted to movement commands.

11. Duke University connected electrodes to the brain of a monkey and recorded brain activity as the monkey reached for food and data from the actions were feed into a ANN. When the monkey reached for food, the ANN could predict its muscle movements and send the instructions to a robotic arm.

12. Fred and Ginger are two robots that can work together to carry out a task. Each robots that have square plates that can move forward or back, left or right.

13. Sandia National Laboratories have been developing swarm robots for find a source. Each robot continually informs others of its position and the strength of the signal it is receiving from the source. The streams of information allow each member to continually refine its search allow the robots to find the source four times faster than any published method.

14. Hiroaki Kitano established Robocup. The ultimate challenge was to develop an team of humanoid robots that could defeat the human world champions by 2050. The rules change each year as research groups get better at their tasks. The robots must recognize where they are on the field, whether they are in attack or defend mode, recognize other teammates, and execute complex trajectory projections of the ball.

15. The piezoelectric effect uses mechanical energy-pressure, to the polarized crystals-the bending results in an electrical current. Touch sensoring is going to be crucial allowing the robot to feel and prevent squashing items it picks up. The degree of skin material elasticity will determine the amount of electric charge.

16. Hiroshi Kobayashi work concentrates on robot facial expressions that can accurately mimic human expressions. The more real the robot looks the more human like its behavior is expected to be.

Research into artificial intelligence has been undergoing a roller coaster ride in the past four decades. Promises were made, but were never fulfilled as to the building of intelligent machines. Both the military and industry were interested in robotics, and industry got what it needed at the time, in the context of manufacturing, but these robots were by no means intelligent. Lately a new wave of optimism in artificial intelligence has appeared, and one will naturally wonder if this optimism is justified. Highly advanced intelligent machines have been predicted to arise in the next two decades, but it remains to be seen if the research in artificial intelligence will allow this to come to fruition.

This brief but insightful book is about the ongoing efforts to build intelligent robots. It gives though a healthy dose of skepticism, and that serves to remind the reader that a lot of hard work is ahead if these types of machines are to be built. The author emphasizes the viewpoint that basing intelligence on the human model as was done in the last thirty years has not resulted in advances in artificial intelligence. Therefore, the author looks to other more simple forms of life to obtain a model of intelligence. Indeed, in the book one finds robots based on snakes, monkeys, flies, cockroaches, grasshoppers, crabs, pikes, birds, orangutans, tortoises, lobsters, crickets, lampreys, dogs, and platypuses. It remains to be seen if this approach will lead to the rise of intelligent machines, but the book does give a highly interesting overview of what has been accomplished to date using this approach. The acceptance of robots and their practical use could perhaps be done best by introducing them as objects we are familiar with. Pet robots or robots that perform useful but restricted functions as already begun in the marketplace, with impressive results.

The author discusses some interesting work on just how to employ robots in the field so that they are able to function and obtain energy autonomously. Anyone who has owned a pet robot understands the aggravation of the frequent need to recharge batteries. The author gives the example of the "SlugBot", which captures real slugs, drops them into a methane-producing biomass generator, which produces electricity for the robot. The engineering difficulties of this approach are enormous of course, and the author is careful to point this out. Farmers though, would appreciate the assistance of these slug-exterminator robots. Other strategies that deal with the "recharging" problem are discussed, such as the one of building "robot ecosystems".

The author also includes a very brief discussion on "robot cars", pointing out that autonomous cars are already a reality. The legal environment though is the only real impediment to their being put into production, as the author points out. This and human factors, such as the trust that an individual must feel in permitting the car to deliver him safely to the destination, will play a major role in the acceptance of robot cars, and robots in general. Humans need to know that the robots are smart enough, and adept enough physically, to assist them in tasks that might bring them physical harm.

Robot toys in the form of "baby bots" are also discussed in the book: the "Robota doll", which was designed to react to touch and handling and to the presence of a human. The author discusses the negative reaction of child development experts to robot dolls, the claim being that children may perhaps be confused about whether the doll is really alive. She raises the question as to whether the money spent on robot doll research would best be spent on child playgroups. Her question is an interesting one, and the answer to it will determine the economic plausibility of developing robots. If a certain need can be met without robots, and at a substantially less cost, there will be no incentive to bring robots to the marketplace, in the area in question. Researchers and business people are going to have to scale down the cost for intelligent robots if they are to become normal additions to the human community.

No book about robots could be complete without a discussion of nanotechnology, and the author does this in the context of the physics. The accelerations and momenta of nanobots is not a problem that researchers need to be concerned with, contrary to the case of large robots. The author also discusses the possibility of using DNA as a "chemical glue" to assemble molecule-size nanobots. This brings in to the picture the use of genetic engineering to assist in the manufacture of these nanobots, a prospect that is utterly fascinating.

Man's quest to replicate living beings goes back thousands of years. Today, there is a 21st century robot with a mobile body complete with intricate computer software, making it "act" rationally. The "thinking android" of our century has evolved through many stages. For years, we've seen robots in movies, science fiction, and on television. I loved R2D2 and C3PO in the first 'Stars Wars' feature.

Robots don't ever have feelings. They do what they are programmed for and nothing else. Only twice, in the movies, have any robots neared human emotions, the "star" of R.O.B.O.T.S and the 'dear family robot' in the movie, 'Centennial Man' played by Robin Williams. The clones in the movie, 'The Island,' were programmed to be robots, but some actually became human with needs and feelings of man.

The Planetary Society's second attempt to place a solar sail into Earth orbit failed when the Volna boostre's first stage misfired shortly after launch from a submarine in the Barents Sea. In a previous attempt in 2001, the Cosmos 1 solar sail did not separate from the booster's third stage. The Society had hoped to make the first controlled flight of a solar sail, which is probelled by only the faint pressure of photons on its eight reflective triangular blades. Such vehicles, a type of robot, are predicted to eventually achieve speeds five times as great as those achieved by a chemical-powered rocket.

In Lille, France, the European Capital of Culture, is a 'fetus to man' sculpture. It has a life-sized metal clock-jack. The human figure, or jack, are the hands on the clock; fetus in the womb at 6:00, erect as an adult at 12:00, old age at 6:00 as he bends under the weight of the years. A fantastic thing to see. The photos in this book are "out of this world."

Back in 1993, my year of temp. jobs on computers, I kept promoting my ability to work 'robotics.' The only talking robot I'd ever seen in person was at Knoxville's 1982 World's Fair, so I know very little about them. And yet, I constantly spoke of being able to control robots, thinking I could get a better job. In our small town and the lawnmower/bicycle factory where I had my last job, robotics were primitive and the operator punched a few buttons for them to perform the more intricate jobs the Japanese do by hand. We're not that technical in America so most every job was done by hand. I was 'accurate but not fast' at data entry and our boss from Memphis, Steve (whose ancestor was an infamous criminal in the Old West), assured me that my accuracy was more important than the enormous errors made by the faster temp staff. He said, when the job was completed, "When iI return, I expect Betty to own a robot factory." Actually, he was back in a few months and said he was glad that I was the one sent to help his crew organize a new computer accounting system for that same factory, Gabriel. I heard him telling others that he was going to hire a full-time person, but he didn't get around to asking me, so I moved on to the fated job in the office at Murray Ohio which did me in. He'd asked me once, "Are we having fun yet?" and I had to shake my head. It was hard work and I lost faith in my ability.

Robotic prosthetics are becoming sophiscated and look and function better than the biological body part. Several movies have been made about and containing robots in addition to 'Star Wars' and '2001 A Space Oddyssey' (Hal), 'Short Circuit' had Johnny 5, and 'Artificial Intelligence' had David. In the 1965 t.v. series, 'Lost in Space' had Dr. Zachary Smith as did the 1998 movie of the same name.

Robots are the future, but they will never take the place of humans, as it takes man (or woman) to make them work properly.

Since the first industrial robot was introduced less than 50 years ago, robot development has progressed in significant pace. Hence, robots are gradualy populated in different aspect of our everyday life in recent years. This book provides a comprehensive introduction of the history of robot development, current state-of-the-art, and a glimpse into the future of robots. The entire book is divided into 12 major sections covering: robot history, robots in fiction (TV, movies, literatures, etc), humanoid robots, domestic service robots, industrial robots, exploratory robots, security robots, medical robotics, toy robots, robotic arts, future directions of robot development, and a practical reference guide for robot enthusiasts. For each topic, the author provides many example systems with heavy illustrations and very readable text. In between the description of different robotic systems, the author also provides interviews of roboticists in the sideboxes. Most importantly, the content is up-to-date till 2004. People from different level of background in robotics will all find the book useful and enjoyable to read.

I used Katsuhiko Ogata's Control Sustems Engineering textbook back in College, an I loved it.

This book is an excellent companion to practice and learn the use of Matlab to resolve Control Systems problems. Together you will have A true introductory couple to Control Engineering

it has a good teaching method for students

I have read and got many problems and examples in this book, so these a lot of guides for studying system dynamics make me to go directly what I am looking for. Please take attention this words I want to say - A lot of solving and understang to various engineering problem and example make you to be friendly to system dynamics & control with this book.Tank you.

I own this book, and I have to tell that I actually love it.

Among the strongest points of this textbook I will mention that:
- It has a huge amount of graphical examples.
- Uses Matlab and Mathcad to resolve problems.
- Gives numerous examples that includes areas of mechanical, electrical, chemical, and electromechanical engineering.
- Put a bigger emphasis on systems modeling than other books.

Is a complete introductory reference to System Dynamics and Control for any student and professional practitioner.