Robot Books

Beginner

Robot Building for Beginners

book Robot Building for Beginners is a wonderful book that provides basic, practical knowledge on getting started in amateur robotics. Short chapters are perfectly suited for bedtime reading. It contains step-by-step instructions and small, hands-on experiments, including a line-following robot that you can make from a sandwich container. Author David Cook begins with the anatomy of a homemade robot and advice on how to proceed successfully. General sources for tools and parts are provided in a consolidated listing with specific part references throughout each chapter. Basic safety and numbering systems are also covered. This huge book helps you unlock the mysteries of robot anatomy and fundamentals with complete step-by-step instructions for building a robot from scratch.

David Cook
ISBN 1893115445
Apress, 1st edition 2002

568 Pages (Paperback)

Intermediate Robot Building

In this follow up to the very successful Robot Building for Beginners, Cook takes you to the next level of robot building. Your robot will be able to explore rooms, follow lines, or battle opponents. Intermediate Robot Building features Roundabout--a room explorer that requires no programming and uses only off-the-shelf electronics. With over 300 photographs and simple directions, this is a fun and easy guide for anyone interested in robot building. Find out how to make a motor (and robot) go forward, reverse, coast, and brake. Begin with the most rudimentary motor driver and build up to the classic full-motion control H-bridge. Significantly improve motor power and driver efficiency by using MOSFETs. Or, simplify your robot designs with prepackaged motor driver chips. The circuits and parts in this book are presented as independent modules, so that you can build the complete robot as described or apply the modules to your own unique robot designs.

David Cook
ISBN 1590593731
Apress, 1st edition 2004

464 Pages (Paperback)

Robot Builder's Bonanza

Robot Builder's Bonanza offers you a complete, unique collection of tested and proven project modules that you can mix and match to create an almost endless variety of highly intelligent and workable robot creatures. Here are over 99 different experiments that you can use in different combinations to create robots of all shapes, sizes, and abilities. Build rolling robots, walking robots, talking robots, robots that can vacuum the floor, serve drinks, teach the kids, and protect the family against fire or intruders. Anything is possible using these modules and a little ingenuity. Best of all, none of these projects will put a strain on your budget. Geared to both novice and intermediate robotics enthusiasts, the projects include all the necessary information you need to construct the essential building blocks that go into the typical personal robot: the body and frame; power and locomotion; appendages; eyes, ears, and mouth; navigation; and electronic control. How you put them all together is up to you!

Gordon McComb, Myke Predko
ISBN 0071468935
McGraw-Hill Professional, 3nd edition 2006

660 Pages (Paperback)

Robot Builder's Sourcebook

Fascinated by the world of robotics but don't know how to tap into the incredible amount of information available on the subject? Clueless as to locating specific information on robotics? Want the names, addresses, phone numbers, and web sites of companies that can supply the exact part, plan, kit, building material, programming language, operating system, computer system, or publication you've been searching for? Turn to Robot Builder's Sourcebook – a unique clearinghouse of information for robot hobbyists that will open 2500+ new doors and spark almost as many new ideas. Written by Gordon McComb, author of the classic Robot Builder's Bonanza, one of the most popular books ever written on amateur robotics, the huge 711 page Sourcebook lists over 2500 mail-order suppliers and other sources, including local-area businesses, cross-referenced and categorized to make your search quick and easy. You'll find detailed information about the resources, including addresses and phone numbers: In short, everything you need to find – and acquire – common and uncommon robotics parts and supplies.

Gordon McComb
ISBN 0071406859
McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics, 1st edition 2002

711 Pages (Paperback)

Mobile Robotic Car Design

This thoughtful guide gives you complete, illustrated plans and instructions for building a 1:10-scale car robot that would cost thousands of dollars if bought off the shelf. But beyond hours of entertainment and satisfaction spent creating and operating an impressive and fun project, Mobile Robotic Car Design provides serious insight into the science and art of robotics. Written by robotics experts, this book gives you a solid background in electrical and mechanical theory, and the design savvy to conceptualize, enlarge, and build robotics projects of your own.

Pushkin Kachroo, Patricia Mellodge
ISBN 007143870X
McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics, 1st edition 2004

278 Pages (Paperback)

PDA Robotics

Build a robot that uses your PDA as a brain! The chasm between PDAs and robots has been spanned, with PDA Robotics : Using Your Personal Digital Assistant to Control Your Robot, an easy to read guide to integrating these two pieces of technology into a single, remote controlled powerhouse. Written in simple language by a renowned software designer and robotics expert, this unique resource reveals innovative concepts and designs, helping you to build your own PDA-controlled robot from the ground up.

Doug Williams
ISBN 0071417419
McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics 1st edition 2003

232 Pages (Paperback)

Robot Programming. A Behavior-Based Approach

This ingenious book/Web site partnership teaches the skills you need to program a robot -- and gives you a virtual robot waiting online to perform your commands and test your programming expertise. You don't need to know either robotics or programming to get started! Using an intuitive method, Robot Programming deconstructs robot control into simple and distinct behaviors that are easy to program and debug for inexpensive microcontrollers with little memory. Once you've mastered programming your online 'bot, you can easily adapt your programs for use in physical robots. Though Robot Programming smoothes the path to acquiring programming skills, it does not reduce it to simplistics. With this resource, you can open the door to all the complexity, sophistication, versatility, and robustness that it is possible for robot behavior to exhibit.

Joe Jones, Daniel Roth
ISBN 0071427783
McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics 1st edition 2003

288 Pages (Paperback)

Advanced

Applied Robotics

Applied Robotics and CD-ROM guides you through the steps of creating a small, rolling robot. It is a practical, project-oriented book and includes projects on the mechanical platform, DC motor control, R/C servo control, sensory input, and microcontrollers. You will be introduced to all the challenging aspects of robotic systems including mechanical design, sensory systems, electronic control, and computer software intelligence. Along the way, you'll also learn about fuzzy logic, subsumption, and microcontrollers. It includes projects to build robot "brains" using both simple discrete electronics, as well as simple and advanced microcontroller systems. Robots are programmed in both assembly language and the fuzzy-logic robot language called Fuzbol. The Fuzbol CD-ROM comes with the book. This book gives a great, project-oriented introduction to the field of robotics. It guides the beginner through the challenges of building a working robot and it will provide new ideas and techniques for the advanced builder. No single project in this book is very difficult; in fact, most of them are simple. Applied Robotics will have you building your robot in no time!

Edwin Wise
ISBN 0790611848
Prompt (DPI - 8/01), 1st edition 1999

328 Pages (Paperback)

Applied Robotics II

Edwin Wise
ISBN 0790612224
Prompt (DPI - 8/01), 1st edition 2002

360 Pages (Paperback)

Introduction to AI Robotics

Introduction to AI Robotics covers all the material needed to understand the principles behind the AI approach to robotics and to program an artificially intelligent robot for sensing, navigation, planning, and uncertainty. Robin Murphy is extremely effective at combining theoretical and practical rigor with a light narrative touch. In the overview, for example, she touches upon anthropomorphic robots from classic films and science fiction stories before delving into the nuts and bolts of organizing intelligence in robots. Following the overview, Murphy contrasts AI and engineering approaches and discusses what she calls the three paradigms of AI robotics: hierarchical, reactive, and hybrid deliberative/reactive. Later chapters explore multiagent scenarios, map making, navigation and path-planning for mobile robots, and the basics of computer vision and range sensing. Each chapter includes objectives, review questions, and exercises. Many chapters contain one or more case studies showing how the concepts were implemented on real robots. Murphy, who is well known for her classroom teaching, conveys the intellectual adventure of mastering complex theoretical and technical material in this excellent introductory text. This book bridges the gap between the simple hobby-oriented books, and the sometimes impenetrable texts aimed at the graduate student. Some of the chapters do get into advanced territory, but the author does a great job of stating the concepts in the most understandable way possible. Also included in the end notes to each chapter is a treasure trove of entertaining robotics trivia and stories from the university labs and from several robotic competitions.

Robin R. Murphy
ISBN 0262133830
The MIT Press, 1st edition 2000

400 Pages (Hardcover)

Behavior-Based Robotics

This introduction to the principles, design, and practice of intelligent behavior-based autonomous robotic systems is the first true survey of this robotics field. The author presents the tools and techniques central to the development of these systems in a clear and thorough manner. Following a discussion of the relevant biological and psychological models of behavior, he covers the use of knowledge and learning in autonomous robots, behavior-based and hybrid robot architectures, modular perception, robot colonies, and future trends in robot intelligence. The text refers to actual implemented robots and includes many pictures and descriptions, making it clear that these are not abstract simulations, but real machines capable of perception, cognition, and action.

Ronald C. Arkin
ISBN 0262011654
The MIT Press, 1st edition 1998

491 Pages (Paperback)

Evolutionary Robotics

This book describes the basic concepts and methodologies of evolutionary robotics and the results achieved so far. An important feature is the clear presentation of a set of empirical experiments of increasing complexity. Software with a graphic interface, freely available on a companion web site, will allow the reader to replicate and vary (in simulation and on real robots) most of the experiments.

Stephano Nolfi, Dario Floreano
ISBN 0-262-64056-2
The MIT Press, 1st edition 2004

336 Pages (Paperback

From Animals to Animats

The From Animals to Animats series brings together research intended to advance the frontier of an exciting new approach to understanding machine intelligence. The contributors represent a broad range of interests from artificial intelligence and robotics to ethology and the neurosciences. Unifying these approaches is the notion of "animat" - an artificial animal, either simulated by a computer or embodied in a robot, which must survive and adapt in progressively more challenging environments. The contributors focus on well-defined models, computer simulations, and they build robots in order to help characterize and compare various principles and architectures capable of inducing adaptive behavior in real or artificial animals. The researchers gather together about once per year to present the results of their experiments and they are published in the Animals to Animats series.

Intelligent Mobile Robots

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