Robotics Books

Used this book for a graduate level introductory non-linear control class. As the review title says, its full of symbols. It is purely theory and equations. No real life "useful" example. however, compared to other nonlinear control books, this gives lot more examples. 99% of real world applications use some type of linearised control. I suppose this book reflects the research in nonlinear control i.e theory and equations and almost no real world application.

You can find most of the papers that are collected in this book online. (if you know where to look for them!) It is a good book for someone who just started learning about omnidirectional cameras. Someone with experience in this area can also use the book as a reference, and avoid the trouble of searching the web for papers and publications.

The advancement in today's world has replaced the manual control & operations by pneumatic instruments.These instruments play a major role in process industries.The control valves have an important function in process plants.The study of the types of valves their application and the controllers like proportional,integral,derivative are helpful for the above.This book is expected to give an overall idea of above.

I thought this book would have a bit more information than it carries....the vfd section was short and wasnt exactly correct in its information.....but it is a decent book for someone needing a basic understanding of HVAC controls and control schemes...

If you are in the HVAC or building automation field and have no understanding of controls or control schemes this is a good basic primer.

If you have some experience already in controls or commercial industrial hvac control schemes... you should pass it up.

I spent 111.00 on the book and while I wish it was more in depth I dont consider it a waste of money. I will read this book...make any notes on info Im not already aware of.... and then pass it on to one of the younger guys at work who needs some good basic information on hvac controls.

This was the second QFT book that I bought.
I think this one is a bit better than
"Quantitative Feedback Theory: Fundamentals and Applications, Second Edition (Control Engineering) by Constantine H. Houpis".
My only problem is the price. It is way overpriced for the material it covers.
If you are new to QFT (Quantitative Feedback Therory) I recommend Marcel Sidi's book: "Design of Robust Control Systems: From Classical to Modern Practical Approaches (Hardcover)". It covers QFT and much more for less than half the price of Oded Yaniv's book.

The authors explained very clearly the concept of rate distortion and its application to video compression. Compared to most information theory books, this book provides a more readable account of the application of rate distortion technique to video compression since the techniques are applied to real world examples. I certainly find this book enjoyable to read.

This book deals general issues and technical information when you design a software for an embedded system. In addition, the authors consider several real-time languages such as Ada 95, occam2 and C-POSIX interfaces instead of commercial RTOS. In particular, this book can be a good programming guide for Ada 95 users. The authors give comprehensive example source codes for suggested algorithms in Ada 95 languages. I plan to buy another book written by the authors called 'Concurrency in Ada'. Finally, if there is one flaw, many examples are given only in the text. I hope the next edition should contain much more figures to help the readers' easy understanding.

J. P. Telotte is one of the foremost authorities on the science fiction film in academia today, having also broader survey of the history of the SF film, entitled simply SCIENCE FICTION FILM, and of higher technology in world cinema, entitled simply A DISTANT TECHNOLOGY: SCIENCE FICTION FILM AND THE MACHINE AGE. The value of this volume consists in its focus on what Telotte correctly identifies as the most dominant motif in the SF film, the artificial person, whether conceived as robot, android, cyborg, replicant, or reanimated being.

The book's greatest strength is that it manages to hit all the highpoints in the history of cinema. One might have wished for some films to receive more or even some discussion, but there can be no quibbling that the films actually discussed represent the most important films of the genre. I also liked that he included a chapter on serials, the only place where you can find robots onscreen (with minor exceptions) between METROPOLIS in 1927 and Gort in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL in 1951. Apart from a needlessly convoluted dissection of FORBIDDEN PLANET, most of his analyses are interesting and insightful. This is likely to stand as one of the standard works on artificial people in film for some time to come.

The book is not without flaws. It at times falls prey to some of the weaknesses of academic writing. For instance, I mentioned above the rather poor discussion of FORBIDDEN PLANET, with a rather beside-the-point belaboring of "doubles" within the film. The writing on doubling mainly serves to present a rather strained point that fails to illuminate anything in the film, but merely serves to articulate an insight that feels rather manufactured. Luckily this is an exception in the book.

One thing that I rather regret in the book is that it continues the rather harsh division between film and television. In the past 25 years far more has been done with robots, cyborgs, and other artificial people than in film. In addition, because television is better suited for in depth character analysis, the explorations of the issues raised by these creations are far more developed. Granted that this book was published in 1995 and therefore before the advent of Max on DARK ANGEL, Adam in Season Four of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, Sharon Agathon and other Cylons on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, Seven of Nine and the Emergency Holographic Doctor on STAR TREK: VOYAGER, Andromeda Ascendant on ANDROMEDA, Jake on JAKE 2.0, Kyle on KYLE XY, and Cameron on TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. Nonetheless, there had been a plethora of robots on TV, including the Robot on LOST IN SPACE (clearly a version of Robbie the Robot, who receives considerable discussion in the book), Rhoda Miller in MY LIVING DOLL, the Daleks and Cybermen on DR. WHO, Hymie on GET SMART, Max Headroom on the show of the same name, Hawks and McQueen on SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND, and, most importantly, Data on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. The ST:TNG episode "The Measure of a Man" is very nearly as important as BLADE RUNNER or ROBOCOP in exploring precisely what it means to be a person. But in the end, I think the omission of any discussion of TV reflects the ongoing though misguided assumption that film is "important" while television is not. Though I ran two different film societies while in grad school, my own belief has evolved in recent years to where I believe that television has actually surpassed film as the thinking person's medium. I am hardly alone in this. There has been an incredible explosion in academic writing about television in the past decade. Hopefully people will cease viewing television and film in such exclusive ways, since the two media are so deeply intertwined. There are, of course, major differences, but these differences as well as their likenesses should be addressed, not ignored.

Still, this is going to remain one of the key texts on the history of artificial people in film. More than aliens, space travel, or time travel, the robot, cyborg, or android is the motif of choice for the modern SF film. This excellent book provides a solid exploration of the history of that motif.

If you're interested in the future uses and directions of digitized images, Alan Rath's joining of digitized images with kinetic sculptures is worth considering. Rath doesn't see kinetic art as alienating, so he's a bit baffled by commentaries on kinetic art such as those in his interview with Meredith Tromble ("There are undoubtedly more electronic circuits in my home than there are bits of painted canvas, yet when I imagine art about daily life I still think of a still life or a family portrait."). Rather he sees our relationship to technology as being just as intimate as our relationship to more culturally established forms of art. His digital video sculptures--built from circuit boards, memory chips, frame buffers and wires--are meant to be playful investigations of people's relationship to machinery and technology. For example, though Rath uses digitized videotaped images of the human eye to lend a psychological presence to his kinetic sculptures, he resists tendencies to anthropomorphize his sculptures in order to discover and create new modes of exchange and social relationships. In Rath's "Watcher," a wall-mounted monitor showing a shifting pair of eyes-neither quite inanimate nor animate-the effect of the image isn't to create a kind of portrait, or suggest any real perceptual ability, but simply to draw attention to our emotional responses as our traditional modes of relating are questioned and thwarted.

A 2-D book format is obviously not the optimal format for experiencing Rath's kinetic sculptures. Nevertheless, if you don't have the opportunity to go to one of his exhibits, the photographs of Rath's exhibited works at SITE Santa Fe is the next best thing.

This is still one of the most concise books on the introduction to robotics being published. All of the information is relevant to industry applications.