Science Current Events | Science News | Brightsurf.com
 
Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)
View Larger Image

Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents) | Hardcover

by Roland Siegwart (Author), Illah R. Nourbakhsh (Author)

List Price: $55.00  
Price:  $35.48
You Save:  $19.52 (35%)
Available:  Usually ships in 24 hours

Binding:  Hardcover
Publisher:  The MIT Press
Edition:  illustrated editionth Edition
Page Count:  335 Pages
Publication Date:  April 01, 2004
Sales Rank:  279,062th


EDITORIAL REVIEWS


Product Description
Mobile robots range from the teleoperated Sojourner on the Mars Pathfinder mission to cleaning robots in the Paris Metro. Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots offers students and other interested readers an overview of the technology of mobility--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 discusses all facets of mobile robotics, including hardware design, wheel design, kinematics analysis, sensors and perception, localization, mapping, and robot control architectures. The design of any successful robot involves the integration of many different disciplines, among them kinematics, signal analysis, information theory, artificial intelligence, and probability theory. Reflecting this, the book presents the techniques and technology that enable mobility in a series of interacting modules. Each chapter covers a different aspect of mobility, as the book moves from low-level to high-level details. The first two chapters explore low-level locomotory ability, examining robots' wheels and legs and the principles of kinematics. This is followed by an in-depth view of perception, including descriptions of many "off-the-shelf" sensors and an analysis of the interpretation of sensed data. The final two chapters consider the higher-level challenges of localization and cognition, discussing successful localization strategies, autonomous mapping, and navigation competence. Bringing together all aspects of mobile robotics into one volume, Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots can serve as a textbook for coursework or a working tool for beginners in the field.


CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 3 reviews)

Useful Instructor's Reference by Thaddeus A. Roppel (Auburn, AL USA) 4 Stars
June 20, 2008
I'm using this as my primary reference for a university course I'm teaching at the advanced senior / beginning graduate level. It is helpful in that the material is organized well, and many of the important algorithms, equations, and methods are described in adequate detail. It is by no means a textbook in the regular sense. There are no problems or student exercises. (I am generating those as I go.) Some of the sections are very well written, others seem a bit poorly edited. There are a number of typos and composition errors that are annoying. It seems that, as with so many technical works these days, no one is really "minding the store" when it comes to final publication. Nevertheless, the overall result is a good, solid reference which can serve as a starting point for generating a set of class notes. The bibliography and web links are very helpful as well. I would suggest very carefully reviewing this book before adopting it as a required textbook for a class.

Good guide to computational robotics by calvinnme (Fredericksburg, Va) 4 Stars
August 21, 2005
This book is one of only a few of its kind. That is, it is a book that focuses on the computational issues in robotics rather than the all-too familiar hobbyist approach. Chapter one is somewhat expendable, since it is simply a prosaic overview of the entire text. Chapter two talks about the theory of robot motion at a high level, with few helpful technical details. Chapter three, "Mobile Robot Kinematics", is where the book takes a dramatic upturn in quality. The computations of robot kinematics are discussed in detail for several kinds of robotic wheels. To really understand this chapter, the reader should already be familiar with dynamics and statics as well as the concepts of three dimensional rotation and matrices. For a companion to the kinematic material, I suggest Craig's "Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control (3rd Edition)". It is much better than the reviewers say. Chapter four covers the various sensors used in robotics, as well as the mathematics needed in the integration of those sensors. The chapter concludes with some basic image processing and computer vision techniques. The material here is broad but somewhat shallow. I suggest that you already be familiar with basic image processing techniques and computer vision, or possibly have a copy of Gonzales & Woods "Digital Image Processing" handy, as well as a copy of Trucco & Verri's "Introductory Techniques for 3D Computer Vision". This is especially true if you wish to grasp some of the statistical techniques at the end of chapter four. Chapters five and six, on localization and navigation, respectively, are mathematically deep. The material on the Kalman Filter is somewhat oversimplified, and to truly grasp the subject of Kalman Filtering one will need to go to an outside source for a full tutorial. In my case, my instructor's notes were sufficient. In summary, this is a very good book for someone who is mathematically mature enough to handle the computational aspects of mobile robotics. The reader should already understand dynamics, statics, numerical linear algebra, image processing, artificial intelligence, and computer vision. This book collects and connects all of these concepts well, but you will have to go digging elsewhere for the complete amount of detail required to perform all of the calculations for the methods described in this book. In short, computational robotics is a type of "capstone course" for engineers/computer scientists with the correct background and reference library, and for those engineers, this is the best guide published to date.

Great emphasis and overview by Berkeley 5 Stars
August 02, 2004
Having spent years working in this field, this book in my opinion places the emphasis on one of the most basic yet most important robotics problems of today: mobility. It also addresses other broad issues related to mobile robots. Despite the book's breadth, it is filled with numerous great examples of functioning robots. The robotics problems tackled by each chapter are well explained and the exposition is deep enough for the reader to truly understand the main issues and the main solutions associated with each research challenge. It is a book that in my opinion can be enjoyed by both an expert and a complete novice in robotics. It's fun to browse, yet if you want to delve into more detail on any given topic you can.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS


Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)

Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)
by Howie Choset (Author), Kevin M. Lynch (Author), Seth Hutchinson (Author), George Kantor (Author), Wolfram Burgard (Author), Lydia E. Kavraki (Author), Sebastian Thrun (Author)

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...

Probabilistic Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)

Probabilistic Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)
by Sebastian Thrun (Author), Wolfram Burgard (Author), Dieter Fox (Author)

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...

Robot Programming : A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics

Robot Programming : A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics
by Joe Jones (Author), Daniel Roth (Author)


* Teaches the concepts of behavior-based programming through text, programming examples, and a unique online simulator robot

* Explains how to design new behaviors by manipulating old ones and adjusting programming

* Does not assume reader familiarity with robotics or programming languages

* Includes a section on designing your own behavior-based system from scratch (20040601)

Designing  Autonomous Mobile Robots: Inside the Mind of an Intelligent Machine

Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots: Inside the Mind of an Intelligent Machine
by John M. Holland (Author)

Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots introduces the reader to the fundamental concepts of this complex field. The author addresses all the pertinent topics of the electronic hardware and software of mobile robot design, with particular emphasis on the more difficult problems of control, navigation, and sensor interfacing.

Covering topics such as advanced sensor fusion, control systems for a wide array of application sensors and instrumentation, and fuzzy logic applications, this volume...

Learning OpenCV: Computer Vision with the OpenCV Library

Learning OpenCV: Computer Vision with the OpenCV Library
by Gary Bradski (Author), Adrian Kaehler (Author), Bradski Gary (Author), Kaehler Adrian (Author)

"This library is useful for practitioners, and is an excellent tool for those entering the field: it is a set of computer vision algorithms that work as advertised." -William T. Freeman, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Learning OpenCV puts you in the middle of the rapidly expanding field of computer vision. Written by the creators of the free open source OpenCV library, this book introduces you to computer vision and...

© 2009 BrightSurf.com