The Robotics Primer (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents series)

This is an excellent book for beginners in the field of robotics and robotic programming. I teach an introductory class in robotic programming and use this book. While there are no sample programs or even much actual code, this book is excellent at presenting complex ideas in a simple way. Those just getting into the field are presented with concepts at a high level, which help place into context their actual programs. For example, when the book covers the topic of behavior based robots it helps my students understand how their simple robot programs (running a Lego robot) fit into the much broader field of robotics. The concepts in this book may be simple to those experienced in the field, but the book successfully casts a lot of complex theory into clearly understandable ideas.On the other end of the spectrum, someone that may already be familiar with the academic literature and research can profit from this book because abstract ideas are presented in a simple manner. This can spark additional ideas because we often become so enmeshed in minutia we fail to step back and look at some of the fundamental ideas upon which our "minutia" are based. This book is a quick read for experts but is still a very good broad survey of the field. The bonus is that the book is not too expensive.Because the field of robotics is changing so fast a book containing specific pieces of technology or code will likely be out of date within a year. I would rather have a book that presents a survey of the fundamental concepts behind the technology and code. That type of book goes out of date much more slowly. Don't let the publication date keep you from purchasing this book.Good book. Get it.

I enjoyed reading this book but I was looking for a book that more specifically discussed programming robots. The book takes such a general approach to that subject that I can't imagine it could be very useful to anyone.I will give the author some benefit of doubt as I did not perform any of the experiments because you need your own robot, such as an accessorized iRobot Create, in order to perform the experiments and exercises. A robot and controllers can easily set you back $300-$500.The book does not actually get down to the fundamentals of designing and fabricating your own robot although it devotes adequate space to the discussion of the advantages of different sorts of motor drives and sensors.It was disappointing to me that author carefully distinguishes between a physical robot and a computer emulation and devotes almost no time to robot simulations.Most chapters have suggestions for further reading. If you don't need this book for a class, I'd suggest that you borrow a library copy, glance through it, and jot down some of those references and buy them instead.

Based on years of course notes, Dr. Mataric has written a wonderfully accessible introduction to and survey of the entire field of robotics. Much collective wisdom from the history of this emerging discipline is contained in these pages. And the on-line workbook, with hands-on programming exercises, is a huge plus. Nothing else like this book exists in the robotics literature.However, the reader should be warned that the book is rife with misprints. It is as if the book were not edited at all. MIT Press should be embarrassed at letting this book out the door in the state that it is in. Let's hope later printings correct the legion of errors. Were it not for the constant misprints, I would have given it 5 stars.

This book would probably be OK for a middle schooler. It briefly introduces very basic concepts in an often too cloying manner. It reads more as an entertainment kind of book than a useful technical reference. If you're someone who knows nothing about electronics or robots, and wants to know if they might be interested in getting started, this might be an OK book for you. If you're looking for a solid reference that you can come back to and help you solve actual robotics problems, look elsewhere.If the book didn't call itself a primer, I would rate it lower. Even for an introduction, it's just too light on content and too heavy on cloying analogies for my taste.

This is a nice book to read. It comes with a simple language and the topic is very interesting...Mine is a used copy purchased at amazon.com. I am using it and so far so well...

It was in perfect condition. This book is well worth the money. A lot of great information in it.

Excellent price, fast shipping and the book condition is excellent. For sure I do recommend for any student who is willing to buy good quality product and affordable price.

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Initially there was an emphasis on robots that thought like humans, but these proved too slow. Since then, robotics has moved away from the semblance of the brain. Nowadays the most common form of robot is reactive, involving responses to sensory inputs, without the rationalising or reward/punisher evaluations of human decision-taking.A robot needs to be able to sense both its internal state and the environment. This means sensing such things as the position of its wheels and the joint-angles of its arms. The environmental sensors measure quantities, but these need to be processed into symbols before they become useful. This is computationally challenging. With very simple sensors the process can be done on the spot, without resorting to a remote processor. Thus the robot may have a switch on the front that gets pressed when it collides with something.Moving the robot around is seen as the first challenge. With this there can be two main types of objective, to get to a location or to a follow a path, the latter being computationally demanding as it requires a search through all possible routes. The robot's effectors such as arms involve the whole robot and its movement through space. Human effectors such as hands are general purpose as an advantage of complexity. Robot effectors are simpler with specialised functions.Notable types of robot control architecture are the deliberative and the reactive. With deliberative there are multiple modules for sensing, planning and acting. Sometimes the robot cannot sense everything it needs to know, and may have to make predictions. This relies on the robot having time to think, plan and consider the outcome of possible actions. In many cases this takes too much time, and the author stresses the constraint on how much can be processed in the time allowed to the robot by its environment.The result of this constraint was that robotics moved away from deliberative planning or human-type processing to systems alien to humans. The simpler reactive control emerged as a common method, based on the close connection between initial sensors and final effectors of action. Purely reactive systems do not use internal representations or make predictions about outcomes. They concentrate on quick reactions to current sensory data, and lack the flexibility of brains, being more comparable to reflexes. The thinking is done by the designer, who considers the situations the robot may encounter, and specifies responses.

Considering the relatively high price of the Kindle version of this book, it has been very carelessly formatted. There are sections that should have bullet points, which are missing, resulting in a jumble of text. Ironically, these are in places meant to clarify the text. Also, many of the images in the book are of very poor quality. I would have given this book one star but I'm sure the paperback version doesn't have these defects; hence the three stars. This book also has a number of typos and the odd error; for example, in Chapter 4 on describing types of actuator, the description of the piezoelectric material should be electrical to mechanical conversion rather than mechanical to electrical.I don't want to give the impression that I don't like this book - I just want to make clear that the Kindle version should be thoroughly checked and corrected.This is probably one of the best books to read if you want to learn about robotics; it contains a wide range of useful and interesting information. In fact, I like the book so much that I intend to return the Kindle book and purchase the paperback version instead.

Fantastic book. Goes through Robotics from the very humble beginnings. Recommended read for Undergrads.The content is written in plain English and doesn't require a team of highly developed monkeys to understand, which is a nice change from other books I've purchased on the topic.The mechanical content is a bit outdated now, despite the publish being fairly recent. IMO, this is more to do with how fast the field is impressively growing, rather than the book itself.Could've spent a bit more on the cover design, but hey. Not that relevant.

If you are about to embark on a robotics subject at University, the dreaded "soccer robot" for instance, then you must read this book first. It certainly won't give you step-by-step instructions how to build a Robot, but that is not what it is for... it is a primer, and the best I have read so far.It covers most of the issues you will face in building an autonomous robot, particularly the programming structures, in a very easy to read style (odd for an academic?). The author manages to cover the issues in just the right depth, not enough to scare my high school sons off, but still enough to be a very interesting read for myself, after having completed a Mechatronics degree.There are also good references to further reading at the end of each chapter, if you want to expand your knowledge in that direction. If you are anyone interested in a hobby, or career in Robotics or A.I., I think this may be the best book to start with.

This is such a well researched and well written book. If you want to learn about robotics then I couldn’t recommend it enough.