Robotics Books

This is a practical joke, a gathering of useless information and bombastic words.
The first joke is renaming the "garden path" AutoLisp tutorial that comes with AutoCAD as "plate" for some robot (page 44).
Other such jokes follow, like the collated hand drawings and computer generated menus clamed to be solid models (figures 2.1-20, 5.1 - in figure 2.14 one can even see the hand drawn lines that were suppose to be the result of some "stretch" function).
A wire frame model of 2 dump trucks and a crane are presented as robotic simulation (chapter 3).
All that has to do with robots are the numerous photographs, courtesy of robotics companies.

For £12.99 you get a mildy interesting if not rather basic book, and a totally inadequate robot kit with essential connector arms made from CARDBOARD with unnecessary slits across them, weakening the whole structure and forcing you to hold the contacts together to get any joy from the motor at which point the drive wheel falls off. Do not buy this, you'll only be disappointed.... not to mention the extremely bored kids. If only the makers could have just moulded all of the kit out of plastic.

First this encyclopedia seems to be directed at middle school children. Second the book is not truly an encyclopedia as no subject is covered in-depth. You get a bunch of staccato blurbs on the different topics. I expected much deeper coverage of clockwork androids, however all I got was a single 5 sentence paragraph. Britannica this is not.

Consider this a primer for younger children.

This is the first time I gave a book 1 star. The reason is that this book should not be sold as stand alone product, but with the kit from Acroname that this book is 100% tied to. The cost of the kit is 300+ USD! The writters falsely tell that you can build a robot by two options: from the kit and from the "scratch". Well, this "from scratch" is simply a lie! To build Palm controlled robot you need some kind of interface between Palm and motors, sensors, etc. Well, this book tells you to buy that interface from...guess who....Acroname! Building it from "scratch" would mean that you are provided with optional schematic diagram that would allow you to build interface. But it doesn't. Everything in the book is tioed to Acroname and its kit. The only good thing is software that comes with this book, but only if you buy that kit from Acroname (remember 300+ USD). This is the only reason book can get that 1 star, otherwise this is a perfect ZERO star book. Stay away from it!