Robotics Books

My 5 year old son LOVES this book. It has lots of cool pictures and is easy for him to understand when I read it to him. He is so into this book that he can listen to all 47 pages at one sitting and still want to go back and thumb through, talking about the pictures. Totally worth the money.

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.

With inexpensive yet powerful computing power and electronics, autonomous robots find a plethora of applications: toys, entertainment, education, and interactive services. Robots for Kids comes at the right time of this new application era. This book focuses on the roles of robotics in education. The first part of the book contains four chapters on the new robotic technology for the kids. As a robotics researcher, I am delighted to read the development history of the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Invention System starting from its incubation period in MIT's Media Lab. The chapter on Sony's AIBO provides inside look on the hardware and software design and integration of this popular robot. For people interested in developing intelligent robots, this is a very informative chapter. The chapter on a robotic storytelling environment showed how to incorporate state-of-art technology to elementary school education. However, the chapter on the story behind the scene of a high-tech toy product development is the most intriguing experience. One can never expect the product development cycle for those high-tech interactive toys, such as the Furby, to be so complicate.

The second part of this book contains five chapters on using robotics in education, from elementary school teaching, high school robotics competitions, university outreach program, to robotics summer camps. For educators, this part of the book provides quite detailed descriptions about how the robotics activities are organized, responses from the students and the impact of using robotics in modern education.

One interesting part of this book is the inclusion of kids' responses to using robots as educational tools. The perspective of children on the educational robotics is invaluable as it provides the first-hand user experience of technologies developed by adults.

In summary, I think this book is a very good reference for robotics researchers and educators who want to explore the new possibilities and potentials of robotics. It is also well organized and very delightful to read.

This is a very decent collection of individually authored chapters from various groups of educators and engineers working in the field of robotics for teaching and for play. Most of the information presented is anecdotal and case-study, giving what seems to be a good overview of the current state of the art (particularly the state of the art in schools). Some of the reference sections at the end of the chapters point to very good articles that help ground one in the theory of techno-literacy.

Wow! I just got done reading this book for the second time in a row. I loved it! I also would like to add that I just got done with my Senior thesis of "Robots: America's Answer to Dwindling Math Scores". (I also just sent it in to be published! ;D) I admit, my first reading was for content. The second reading was solely for pleasure. Of the 20 sources I used on my 23 page case study, this book became my 'bible.' Nothing I found on this topic compares.

This book is an assortment of well chosen essays in which Druin and Hendler are the editors. My favorite essay regards the FIRST robotics competition. Everything is detailed from the educational impact, mentor how-to's, and student development to gaining corporate sponsorship, student interviews, and a winning team's success story. The book is worth buying just for this essay alone.

However, the various essays regarding Lego Mindstorms are superb as well. One essay details a step-by-step process of how to mimic her "Robocamp." Another from MIT profs explains how Mindstorms came to existence. There are also various case studies regarding the educational research with children and Lego's done in different parts of the world. One can't help but walk away from this book thinking that our "old school" curriculum must be updated with these new enticing technologies!

A very good book for the operators of observation class ROVs. I own a Seabotix LBV and the book is filled with uesful information.

The ROV Manual by Bob Christ and Bob Wernli is a great reference book for operators, pilots and owners. A good manual that can be used as a textbook or simply as a reference has been needed for a long time. With chapters on subjects ranging from the history of ROVs, to practical, hands-on tips for specific types of field operations it is a wealth of information for the newcomer and seasoned pilot alike. I highly recommend it. (In the interest of full disclosure, I contributed the section on lighting in chapter 3 but don't let that dissuade you. This is an excellent book).

This is a book I have been looking for a long time. Very useful for us users of small observation class ROVs.

En que consisten los controles de par para motores de corriente alterna, especialmente los que se implementan en variadores de frecuencia, que puedan ser acoplados a compresores de aire, amoníaco o bombas de extracción de agua de pozos. son aplicables este tipo de controles?

this book isnt easy to read. the illustration could be better. but on the other hand it is full of very detailed information about control of various electrical maschines (with sensors, sensorless and DTC). it gives a complete introduction to the space vector theory. a short review of different electrical maschines is also present. a basic understand of electrical maschines whould by helpfull reading this book.

En que consisten los controles de par para motores de corriente alterna, especialmente los que se implementan en variadores de frecuencia, que puedan ser acoplados a compresores de aire, amoníaco o bombas de extracción de agua de pozos. son aplicables este tipo de controles?

Thinking About Android Epistemology, by Kenneth M. Ford, Clark Glymour and Patrick J. Hayes, includes papers by the editors and other major researchers in Artificial Intelligence including Marvin Minsky, Herb Simon, Anatol Rapoport, Douglas Lenat, and Daniel Dennett. From technical discussions about the Frame Problem to engaging commentary on philosophical topics such as the role of "human essence" and intelligence, many of the major issues of Artificial Intelligence are presented in a clear and easy to comprehend manner by many of the field's pioneers. To varying degrees each paper in the collection stands as a coherent and self-contained contribution. However, much is to be gained by reading the collection from start to finish. The book has few low points and serves as an excellent overview of AI. After reading the book I came away with the view that AI may be the ultimate conjunction of science and philosophy.

The book sits between philosophy and artificial intelligence. There is little in the articles specific to detailed previous knowledge of computer hardware and software, or of the brain. Hence, most articles can be readily appreciated by a broad non-technical audience. These consist of speculations about the current state of understanding of how to make an artificial mind or android.

We see some ruminations on neural networks, as these are believed by some to be the best approach to modelling a biological mind. Churchland writes a good article here. But overall, some readers might be impressed by how much is still unknown.

Android Epistemology, as defined in this book, seeks to answer fundamental questions about the nature of Artificially Intelligent machines. The theme of the book, "thinking about" machine intelligence, unfolds in a set of often-entertaining essays by philosophers, cognitive scientists and computer scientists. The topics explored here are quite diverse, and are typically presented in an informal, discursive style. Curious computer scientists specializing in AI will find the book useful for the purpose of surveying part of the philosophical underpinnings of AI. Especially insightful was the historical introduction by the book's editors, which included a trace of the intellectual heritage of AI pioneers to philosopher mentors. Conversely, non-computer scientists should have their minds expanded by essays such as those by Simon and Churchland, which clearly and concisely spell out and rigorously defend designs of architectures of machine intelligence.

The book is divided into four parts, each containing essays that roughly seek to answer the following questions:

1. Can machines be intelligent? (Part I)
2. Is humans and machine intelligence based on the same underlying design principles? (Part II)
3. What limitations, if any, to designing intelligent systems are provided by the frame problem? (Part III)
4. What are the range of human traits that machines can exhibit? (part IV)

Among the essays in part one, Clark Glymour's entertaining "Silicon Reflections" shows by way of a clever fable that the claim that networks comprised of "artificial sensory and motor nerves" cannot have mental states, i.e., can't think, feel, or understand, is hard to defend. The key is imagining an advance in medical technology whereby hybrid brains, part electro-mechanical, part brain matter, are possible. The underlying argument is a sort of Sorites paradox: if the result of replacing one brain cell in a brain with mental states with a mechanical equivalent is also a brain with mental states, then repeating this "operation" one more time should have the same effect; hence repeating it until the brain has completely been mechanized will produce something that has mental states. To avoid this conclusion, the "Dretskeans" (read: Searleans, deniers of the mechanical mind) are forced to either extreme or ad-hoc positions. This essay also incorporates the theme, repeated in the closing article of this book and in other publications by the editors, that machine intelligence as a technology offers humans a sort of cognitive prosthesis, a way of augmenting the native capabilities of the human mind.

An essential reading for anyone interested in the foundations of machine intelligence is Herb Simon's contribution. The language here is remarkably clear, lucid and bold. It cuts through the rhetoric and nonsense that accompanied much of the debate around the Chinese room argument, giving each premise in the argument against AI its proper amount of space (which is often less than a sentence). Among the themes Simon discusses here that still make up the fundamental challenges for engineers of machine intelligence are:

1. The focus on the response-time requirements of models that we build for decision-makers, devising concise, tractable representations of a complex search state for problem solving. He notes that the set of representations forms an ordered class on which notions of equivalence can be defined. He stresses the need for scalability and the importance of laboratory prototypes. It is clear that Simon always envisioned sophisticated agents observing and changing the world.

2. The importance of "nearly decomposable" systems. This implies a layered architecture for control and deliberation with different levels of abstraction. Simon is clearly aware of the challenges of complexity in intelligent systems, and his comments about decomposable systems are also relevant to issues related to verification.

3. The fact that processing in intelligent systems, whether human or machine, is distributed and parallel. Consequently, architectural issues of structure and "style" (how components interact) are important.

4. Reasoning with "Ill-structured phenomena", part of what today is called reasoning under uncertainty. Simon recognizes that imposing structure on ill-structured phenomena often forces a non-propositional representational framework. This insight is clearly reflected in the field of AI today.

Simon also boldly asserts that some arguments against machine intelligence are based on a failure to draw the proper distinctions between what is essential for mind vs. what is not. In the latter category he discusses things like intention, consciousness, motivation, and awareness. Simon's article offers a complete and general set of principles that form the underpinnings for an architecture of machine intelligence. Another nice essay in part two is Paul Churchland's technically detailed and crisp response to the charge that the content of consciousness cannot be mapped to an activation pattern in the brain, because the latter differ between individuals, whereas the former do not.

The best essays in part three are contributions by Daniel Dennett and Henry Kyburg. The frame problem, as Dennett notes, is an "installation problem", a problem of creating a concise, finite model of action that can be used by an android to autonomously plan actions. The connection to autonomy is required; teleoperated systems, or systems like the MER rovers who are commanded remotely on the ground, do not suffer from the frame problem. Dennett speculates that the solution may reside in a shift in representational paradigm to something that would be referred to today as state-based planning. On this paradigm, an agent can be viewed as continuously observing the state of the world (a vector of values) and executing a policy on that state, construed as a function from states to actions. A policy can be viewed as a very large look-up table, and no enumeration of consequences of actions is ever required. Of course, devising a policy incurs its own technical challenges; the primary problem is the exponential size of the state space (in the number of variables). Indeed, the main challenge to such state-based approaches is in managing this complexity, but at the same time the frame problem dissolves. Dennett combines a serious discussion with playful stabs at academic philosophers, who emerge as simultaneously intellectually lazy (coming up with meaningful explanations are "not their problem") and expert at pointing out the obvious.

Kyburg picks up on many of Dennett's themes in his contribution. His notion of practical certainty anticipates recent developments in probabilistic robotics [thrun]. Specifically, his description of how beliefs are updated from new observations seems to map directly into what filtering algorithms do. Again, shifting the representational paradigm from propositions to one based on utilities dissolves the frame problem into a belief distribution.

Part four contains in general the weakest entries in the collection. The essay by Sterrett proposes a variation of the Turing Test for intelligence in terms of the ability of intelligent agents to "override instincts or habits". The problem with this "test" is that it is clearly not empirically verifiable. A native Martian watching a MER rover traverse around a large rock might conclude it is overriding its habit of traversing in a straight line. The designers of the AutoNav system on MER would no doubt respond that its actions are completely habitual; faced with similar obstacles, the AutoNav system would always respond in the way observed. Sterrett's essay in general suffers from an obviously superficial understanding of AI architectures. The reader gets the sense of being invited to be impressed by the fact that an academic philosopher with very little technical knowledge of AI is able to come to grips successfully and accept the idea of machine intelligence.

However, this book is in general a stimulating, fun read.

Excellent coverage of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)and its applications. Many interesting case studies and practical examples. A number of new ideas about optimization of complex models including neural network). New ideas on periodic decomposition and long term prediction.

Conventionally, algebraic tools like SVD are used for solving least squares problems; this book shows how SVD and other forms of orthogonal transformation can be used for data analysis, subset selection and modeling. I find this book well written, easy to understand and informative. Most importantly, it has an orientation towards applications. I would say, it has a lot of materials, which researchers and practitioners dealing with data analysis and modeling will find useful.

This title is a wonderful collection of chapters written by psychologists, engineers, mathematicians, and musicians. A better source for the fundamentals and directions of research and issues involved in auditory display is not currently available. A must read for those interested in auditory pattern recognition.

This proceedings is a excellent review of differents uses of audio in computer systems. The book covers topics like auralization, sonification, as well as a very useful anotated bibliography. Moreover, a companion CD included in the book ilustrate aurally all of the concepts explained by using text in the book.

MIT is one of the key centres of robotics and it is no surprise that this text hails from it. Bekey provides a timely survey (circa 2005) of the state of autonomous robotics. He mentions some robots which have become commercially available recently, like Sony's Aibo, or the Roomba, Asimo or Cog. While simple and cheap, these robots involve key issues of mobility, sensors and decision making.

There are several types of land locomotion. Bekey gives a summary of various efforts since the 70s, to use 4, 6 or 8 legs in a robot.

Aside from locomotion, the book covers many other topics. Such as arm motion and manipulation. This even includes the "exotic" use of neural networks to do inverse kinematics mappings. Though Bekey cautions that the slow convergence of these networks is a serious drawback to realtime usage.

The book should be very readable to someone with a general background in science or engineering. It defers specialised technical details to the papers and texts given in its references.

This is a broad brush overview of autonomous robotics. It covers a lot of ground and the depth is not great. But it is an outstanding introduction for just about anybody interested in autonomous robotics. To me it is interesting that the book takes such a biological approach. I have other books that actively try to cover up the biological inspiration. This book flounts it. Controls, structures, learning, software architectures, locomotion, it is all here. Although there is not a lot of depth in the volume, the chosen style and depth makes the book available to a very wide audience and the list of references is tremendous. That is after all where one learns this material.

The book takes a hands-on approach to robot-building, and the author goes out of the way not by promising a gizmo but rather a simple acoustic-controlled car trolley which can be extended to pave the way for a more advanced project. A course in basic electronics is recommended, the book also covers sufficient details so as not to require much knowledge initially. But the fun part of the book is the amount of possibilities that the author has actually tried out with the robot - this includes following a chalk line on pavements, and even seeking and plugging into a battery charger when its supplies go low! This is definitely a book worth treasuring, and moreover - IMPLEMENTING!

This book is based on a robot which anyone can build if they have a little electronic knowledge. BUT, the book only describes a robot which just walks around the floor. THAT'S IT!! There's no voice recognition, it's just like a remote controlled car, but it can go around on its own without a controller. I am now searching for a book which reveals how you build a GOOD, WORKING robot, not just an electronic car like this book!

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.