Engineering Bookshelf

Theory of Applied Robotics: Kinematics, Dynamics, and Control
by Reza N. Jazar

Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1441917497

Theory of Applied Robotics: Kinematics, Dynamics, and Control 2E is appropriate for courses in robotics that emphasize kinematics, dynamics, and control.

The contents of this book are presented at a theoretical-practical level. It explains robotics concepts in detail, concentrating on their practical use. Related theorems and formal proofs are provided, as are real-life applications. Students, researchers, and practicing engineers alike will appreciate this user-friendly presentation of a wealth of robotics topics, most notably orientation, velocity, and forward kinematics.

Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind
by Hans P. Moravec

Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195136306

Moravec, founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, foresees big things for robots. "Barring cataclysms, I consider the development of intelligent machines a near-term inevitability." First- generation universal robots, with lizard-scale intelligence, will be at hand by 2010, he says. No more than 30 years later, fourth-generation robots will have human-scale processing power. "The fourth robot generation ... will have human perceptual and motor abilities and superior reasoning powers. They could replace us in every essential task and, in principle, operate our society increasingly well without us." Indeed, they should be able to carry human capabilities into the rest of the universe. And what will people do when the robots take over? They will all be able to lead the kind of life now enjoyed only by the idle rich.

Robotics: Modelling, Planning and Control
by Bruno Siciliano, Lorenzo Sciavicco, Luigi Villani, Giuseppe Oriolo

Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1846286417

Robotics provides the basic know-how on the foundations of robotics: modelling, planning and control. The text develops around a core of consistent and rigorous formalism with fundamental and technological material giving rise naturally and with gradually increasing difficulty to more advanced considerations.

Appendices ensure that students will have access to a consistent level of background in basic areas such as rigid-body mechanics, feedback control, and others. Problems are raised and the proper tools established to find engineering-oriented solutions rather than to focus on abstruse theoretical methodology.

Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots
by Roland Siegwart, Illah Reza Nourbakhsh, Davide Scaramuzza

Publisher: The MIT Press
ISBN: 0262015358

Mobile robots range from the Mars Pathfinder mission's teleoperated Sojourner to the cleaning robots in the Paris Metro. This text offers students and other interested readers an introduction to the fundamentals of mobile robotics, spanning the mechanical, motor, sensory, perceptual, and cognitive layers the field comprises.

The text focuses on mobility itself, offering an overview of the mechanisms that allow a mobile robot to move through a real world environment to perform its tasks, including locomotion, sensing, localization, and motion planning. It synthesizes material from such fields as kinematics, control theory, signal analysis, computer vision, information theory, artificial intelligence, and probability theory.

Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations
by Howie Choset, Kevin M. Lynch, Seth Hutchinson, George A. Kantor, Wolfram Burgard, Lydia E. Kavraki, Sebastian Thrun

Publisher: A Bradford Book
ISBN: 0262033275

Robot motion planning has become a major focus of robotics. Research findings can be applied not only to robotics but to planning routes on circuit boards, directing digital actors in computer graphics, robot-assisted surgery and medicine, and in novel areas such as drug design and protein folding.

This text reflects the great advances that have taken place in the last ten years, including sensor-based planning, probabalistic planning, localization and mapping, and motion planning for dynamic and nonholonomic systems. Its presentation makes the mathematical underpinnings of robot motion accessible to students of computer science and engineering, rleating low-level implementation details to high-level algorithmic concepts.

Probabilistic Robotics
by Sebastian Thrun, Wolfram Burgard, Dieter Fox

Publisher: The MIT Press
ISBN: 0262201623

Probabilistic robotics is a new and growing area in robotics, concerned with perception and control in the face of uncertainty. Building on the field of mathematical statistics, probabilistic robotics endows robots with a new level of robustness in real-world situations.

This book introduces the reader to a wealth of techniques and algorithms in the field. All algorithms are based on a single overarching mathematical foundation. Each chapter provides example implementations in pseudo code, detailed mathematical derivations, discussions from a practitioner's perspective, and extensive lists of exercises and class projects.

Robotics: Theory and Industrial Applications
by Larry Ross, Stephen Fardo, James Masterson, Robert Towers

Publisher: Goodheart-Willcox
ISBN: 1605253219

Robotics: Theory and Industrial Applications is an introduction to the principles of industrial robotics, related systems, and applications. This text is a comprehensive tool in learning the technical aspects of robotics and includes coverage of power supply systems, degrees of freedom, programming methods, sensors, end effectors, implementation planning, and system maintenance.

The second edition is updated with full-color illustrations and photos that reflect changes in both the field of robotics and technology in general. The content has been revised to keep pace with robotic technology and reorganized to maximize student comprehension. Various features throughout the text address special interest topics, including pioneers in the field of robotics, careers in robotics, and exciting applications of robotic technology.

Robotics, Vision and Control: Fundamental Algorithms in MATLAB
by Peter Corke

Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3642201431

The practice of robotics and computer vision both involve the application of computational algorithms to data. Over the fairly recent history of the fields of robotics and computer vision a very large body of algorithms has been developed. However this body of knowledge is something of a barrier for anybody entering the field, or even looking to see if they want to enter the field - What is the right algorithm for a particular problem?, and importantly, How can I try it out without spending days coding and debugging it from the original research papers?

The author has maintained two open-source MATLAB Toolboxes for more than 10 years: one for robotics and one for vision. The key strength of the Toolboxes provide a set of tools that allow the user to work with real problems, not trivial examples.

Robot Modeling and Control
by Mark W. Spong, Seth Hutchinson, M. Vidyasagar

Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471649902

Based on the highly successful classic, Robot Dynamics and Control, by Spong and Vidyasagar (Wiley, 1989), Robot Modeling and Control offers a thoroughly up-to-date, self-contained introduction to the field. The text presents basic and advanced material in a style that is at once readable and mathematically rigorous.