Fundamentals of Robotics: Linking Perception to Action

Citation

Davies, B. (2005), "Fundamentals of Robotics: Linking Perception to Action", Industrial Robot, Vol. 32 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2005.04932cae.001

Fundamentals of Robotics: Linking Perception to Action

Fundamentals of Robotics: Linking Perception to Action

Ming XieWorld Scientific Publishing2003716 pp. ISBN 981-238-313-1 (Hardcover)ISBN 981-238-335-2 (Paperback)£87 (Hardcover), £43 (Paperback)www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/5230.html

Keywords: Robotics, Books

This book presents a thorough analytical approach to the linking of the reception of the external environment to the movements and actions of humanoid robots.

From the initial introductory chapter on robotics through to the final chapter on robot decision making systems, the approach is precise, analytical and in-depth.

It is not a book for the faint hearted, and, whilst the section on tuning PID controllers does contain practical advice on how to optimise the stability in such systems, it is not a book littered with specific practical examples.

This is an excellent book for the humanoid robot builder who wishes to approach construction and operation from first principles, but the book is less suitable for a practical builder who simply wishes to sort out some practical problems in an existing device.

The book provides no coverage of the physical or control problems associated with the next generation of compliant actuators, an area which is bound to develop in significance over the next few years.

One or two expressions such as "circular velocity" and "moment of force" that appear can give the book a slightly old fashioned linguistic style and some of the prose is not written in entirely consistent grammatical style. For example, the opening chapter has many sections written in the first person and even within these sections "I" and "we" seem to be used erratically.

The book provides a range of exercises at the end of each chapter that ensure that any reader completing the exercises has a well founded understanding of the work. The questions range from the somewhat enigmatic – "explain the origin of motion" to much more precise questions such as determining the stability of a closed loop control system form a specific transfer function.

Abstract/Summary

This is thorough and in-depth tome specifically relating many aspects of robotics to the operational characteristics of humanoid robots and the book will be most useful to the roboticist who already has a sound grasp of the individual engineering disciplines associated with the humanoid robots.

The work could benefit from the inclusion of additional examples of applications of the theory and some attention to the next generation of compliant robot systems.

Bruce DaviesSenior Lecturer, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Heriot-Watt University