| View Larger Image | Autonomous Robots: From Biological Inspiration to Implementation and Control (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents) | Hardcoverby George A. Bekey (Author)
| List Price: | $60.00 | | Price: | $51.00 | | You Save: | $9.00 (15%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | The MIT Press | | Page Count: | 593 Pages | | Publication Date: | June 01, 2005 | | Sales Rank: | 804,396th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Autonomous robots are intelligent machines capable of performing tasks in the world by themselves, without explicit human control. Examples range from autonomous helicopters to Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner. In this book, George Bekey offers an introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that can be used both in the classroom and as a reference for industry professionals. He surveys the hardware implementations of more than 300 current systems, reviews some of their application areas, and examines the underlying technology, including control, architectures, learning, manipulation, grasping, navigation, and mapping. Living systems can be considered the prototypes of autonomous systems, and Bekey explores the biological inspiration that forms the basis of many recent developments in robotics. He also discusses robot control issues and the design of control architectures. After an overview of the field that introduces some of its fundamental concepts, the book presents background material on hardware, control (from both biological and engineering perspectives), software architecture, and robot intelligence. It then examines a broad range of implementations and applications, including locomotion (wheeled, legged, flying, swimming, and crawling robots), manipulation (both arms and hands), localization, navigation, and mapping. The many case studies and specific applications include robots built for research, industry, and the military, among them underwater robotic vehicles, walking machines with four, six, and eight legs, and the famous humanoid robots Cog, Kismet, ASIMO,"and QRIO. The book concludes with reflections on the future of robotics—the potential benefits as well as the possible dangers that may arise from large numbers of increasingly intelligent and autonomous robots. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 3 reviews)
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Very nice overview, introduction, & survey, but not enough engineering details by Arthur A. REYES (Arlington, TX USA)  3 Stars
February 17, 2009
Yes, this book provides a fine overview. I need to get the essential information to supervise development of autonomous mobile robots by a team of engineering seniors. This book does not provide me with enough technical information to know the essential abstractions, math models, etc. to guide the project.
My favorite book on the subject is still "Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots" by Sigward & Nourbahksh, because it meets my needs.
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timely survey of moving robots by W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3)  4 Stars
December 28, 2005
MIT is one of the key centres of robotics and it is no surprise that this text hails from it. Bekey provides a timely survey (circa 2005) of the state of autonomous robotics. He mentions some robots which have become commercially available recently, like Sony's Aibo, or the Roomba, Asimo or Cog. While simple and cheap, these robots involve key issues of mobility, sensors and decision making.
There are several types of land locomotion. Bekey gives a summary of various efforts since the 70s, to use 4, 6 or 8 legs in a robot.
Aside from locomotion, the book covers many other topics. Such as arm motion and manipulation. This even includes the "exotic" use of neural networks to do inverse kinematics mappings. Though Bekey cautions that the slow convergence of these networks is a serious drawback to realtime usage.
The book should be very readable to someone with a general background in science or engineering. It defers specialised technical details to the papers and texts given in its references.
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Great overview by James H. McDuffie (Huntsville, Alabama United States)  5 Stars
August 22, 2005
This is a broad brush overview of autonomous robotics. It covers a lot of ground and the depth is not great. But it is an outstanding introduction for just about anybody interested in autonomous robotics. To me it is interesting that the book takes such a biological approach. I have other books that actively try to cover up the biological inspiration. This book flounts it. Controls, structures, learning, software architectures, locomotion, it is all here. Although there is not a lot of depth in the volume, the chosen style and depth makes the book available to a very wide audience and the list of references is tremendous. That is after all where one learns this material.
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