Robotics Demystified

I liked this book, but it's definitely not a book you want to give someone that's getting started with robotics. I bought it and then put it aside after I completed all projects in another book that was more suitable for a beginner like me.

Not the best of books but it could be useful if you were familiar with CAD and CNC machining i reccomend it more for people who have spent a long amount of time in work shops

Great book on robots.

I am scheduled to teach a low-level lab on introductory robotics. I chose to use this book as the course textbook because it is what the instructor before me used, so I ordered a copy and read through most of it. I'm stuck using it for this semester but if I were to teach this course again I would look high and low for another book. My two complaints are, #1. In trying to cover absolutely everything it ends up being very thin on anything specific. For example, including chapters on feedback control, electromagnetics and semiconductor physics provides the appearance of heft and technicality to the book but actually provides very little insight and practical application for the average person buying this book off the shelf. The schematics provided in chapter 10 (on capacitance) for a twin-T notch filter and diode-capacitor circuits look technical and interesting but what do they contribute to someone just picking up this book and interested in building a basic robot? And my complaint #2. (which goes hand in hand with complaint #1), is that in trying to discuss complex topics with an "awe shucks, ain't this easy" folksy kind of approach, the author completely mystifies what is happening. For example, the discussion of discrete electron levels includes the insight that if one bangs on an electron with a hammer, this will cause the electron to jump to a higher energy shell. And that electrons can have an energy of "1" or "2" but not "1.25". I know what he's driving at but the exposition is confusing in a number of places. Or invoking Einstein's theory of relativity to explain a screw going into wood doesn't help either. On the other hand I did enjoy the chapters on Simple Machines, Joints and Power Transmission. I suppose the mechanical engineering aspects are easier to pull of than the electrical engineering ideas which can be a little more abstract. But complaints aside, a book with this level of coverage cannot be easy to pull off and it must be easy to find faults with it somewhere. In the final analysis, my perception is that if I knew nothing about robotics and picked this book up, I would find it difficult to see the steps involved in putting together a non-trivial robot based upon the information contained in this book.

Basic and does not cover any topic in much detail.