Robotics Book Suggestions

Comments

• MacTuxLin Posts: 821

  2011-04-10 18:04 edited 2011-04-10 18:04

  Hi,
  
  How much do you know about servos? Played with RC motors?
• blittled Posts: 681

  2011-04-10 19:31 edited 2011-04-10 19:31

  I have Robot Builder's Bonanza, Third Edition and found it very informative on robotics. You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/Robot-Builders-Bonanza-Gordon-McComb/dp/0071468935/ref=pd_sim_b_3
• Shylark87 Posts: 10

  2011-04-11 12:33 edited 2011-04-11 12:33

  MacTuxLin I have used servos some nothing too complex. I helped with a project that used a couple servos in a PID loop but I didn't do the programming or design.
  
  blittled Thanks that book does look like about what I want good.
  
  I also found a Introduction to robotics course on YouTube that looks helpful on the kinematics/motion planning side of things.
• erco Posts: 20,261

  2011-04-11 13:00 edited 2011-04-11 13:00

  Good call, blittled. Not only is RB Bonanza a great book, the author Gordon McComb is a nice guy and a contributing member of these forums!
  
  Many good books out there. Robotics is half programming, half electronics, half mechanics, and half luck. That's two much!
  
  And here's a book that disappointed me: Check the reviews.
  http://www.amazon.com/Robotics-Demystified-Edwin-Wise/dp/0071436782/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302551590&sr=1-1-spell
• Shylark87 Posts: 10

  2011-04-11 13:38 edited 2011-04-11 13:38

  Thanks erco, my reason for asking is because I spent a while looking at numerous books with only a few reviews that contradicted each other. I know there are plenty of great robotics books out there and that the Parallax forums would point me to them.
• MacTuxLin Posts: 821

  2011-04-11 19:09 edited 2011-04-11 19:09

  I have those books mentioned above as well but 1 book I personally felt it has a better grasp on the foundation on robotics, electronics & programming is this "123 robotics experiments for the evil genius By Michael Predko, Myke Predko". OK, the name is kinda weird but it helps opens many possibilities as far as robotics is concern & not 1 or 2 methods of doing robotics. It comes with a bare BS2 board too which someone in this forum had populated (http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129365-Evil-Genius-Board-with-Propeller-Spin-Stamp-Microcontroller&highlight=123+evil+genius)
• Duane Degn Posts: 10,588

  2011-04-11 19:56 edited 2011-04-11 19:56

  Most of Parallax's books are available for free as an ebook. I really liked Robotics with the Boe-Bot and Understanding Signals. The books are very educational even if you don't have the same hardware as what is used in the books.
  
  Since MacTucLin mentioned an evil genius book I'll share my impressions on some of these. For starters, just because you like on evil genius book doesn't mean you'll like them all. Some are down right juvenile. I purchased Electronic Sensors for the Evil Genius. At first I thought it was a great book. But once I tried to actually build one of the sensors I found the author was just copying reference circuits of data sheets. In the chapter about a pH sensor, the book includes the asterisk indicating a footnote (it's in the original datasheet too) but while the datasheet provides the footnote the book didn't include it (it turns out to be an important footnote). Much of the chapter is copied word for word from datasheets. It became very obvious to me that the author had never actually built the sensor he describes.
• erco Posts: 20,261

  2011-04-11 21:31 edited 2011-04-11 21:31

  Embedded Robotics by Braunl is very good.