Build your own robot! Learn what makes a robot work. Then design, build, and program your very own robot. The experiments in this book will guide you through the field of robotics. Many experiments include ideas you can use for your own science fair project.

Provides instructions for making robots from materials around the home.

The purpose of “Evil Genius†is to create an entertaining book made up of a series of projects that will explain electronics from static electricity (rubbing a balloon) to developing robots. The book will include the tools necessary for the reader to create the projects in the book at very little cost or inconvenience. The book will be divided into 19 sections, each one with two or more projects. The introduction to each section will take up two pages, as well as the “For Consideration†at the end. The section introduction and “For Consideration†will explain the history, theory, and parts in the section. Each project will use material readily available at “Radio Shack†, “Wal-Mart†, “Home Depot†and “Toys â€R Us†. In some cases, the reader will have to go to Digi-Key or Jameco. It will also focus on using prebuilt components where ever possible along with using common chips instead of building circuits out of discrete components.The major sections are:-Start here-Basic electronics-Semiconductors-Applied electronics-Digital electronics-The PICmicro microcontroller and â€C†programming language-Games and applications-Robot muscles-Robot sensors-Robot structures-Sample robot applications

Taking a completely hands-on approach, using cheap and easily available robotics kits, Practical and Experimental Robotics provides a detailed exploration of the construction, theory, and experiments for different types of robots. With topics ranging from basic stamp microcontrollers to biped and propeller based robots, the text contains laboratory experiments, examples with solutions, and case studies. The authors begin with a review of the essential elements of electronics and mechanics. They describe the basic mechanical construction and electrical control of the robot, then give at least one example of how to operate the robot using microcontrollers or software. The book includes a reference chapter on Basic Stamp Microcontollers with example code pieces and a chapter completely devoted to PC interfacing. Each chapter begins with the fundamentals, then moves on to advanced topics, thus building a foundation for learning from the ground up. Building a bridge between technicians who have hands-on experience and engineers with a deeper insight into the workings, the book covers a range of machines, from arm, wheel, and leg robots to flying robots and robotic submarines and boats. Unlike most books in this field, this one offers a complete set of topics from electronics, mechanics, and computer interface and programming, making it an independent source for knowledge and understanding of robotics.

foreword by Lashon Booker To program an autonomous robot to act reliably in a dynamic environment is a complex task. The dynamics of the environment are unpredictable, and the robots' sensors provide noisy input. A learning autonomous robot, one that can acquire knowledge through interaction with its environment and then adapt its behavior, greatly simplifies the designer's work. A learning robot need not be given all of the details of its environment, and its sensors and actuators need not be finely tuned. Robot Shaping is about designing and building learning autonomous robots. The term "shaping" comes from experimental psychology, where it describes the incremental training of animals. The authors propose a new engineering discipline, "behavior engineering," to provide the methodologies and tools for creating autonomous robots. Their techniques are based on classifier systems, a reinforcement learning architecture originated by John Holland, to which they have added several new ideas, such as "mutespec," classifier system "energy,"and dynamic population size. In the book they present Behavior Analysis and Training (BAT) as an example of a behavior engineering methodology.

Discusses the history of robotics and offers seven project ideas with accompanying step-by-step instructions for converting toys into working robots.

This book is the volume of the proceedings for the 17th Edition of ISER. The goal of ISER (International Symposium on Experimental Robotics) symposia is to provide a single-track forum on the current developments and new directions of experimental robotics. The series has traditionally attracted a wide readership of researchers and practitioners interested to the advances and innovations of robotics technology. The 54 contributions cover a wide range of topics in robotics and are organized in 9 chapters: aerial robots, design and prototyping, field robotics, human‒robot interaction, machine learning, mapping and localization, multi-robots, perception, planning and control. Experimental validation of algorithms, concepts, or techniques is the common thread running through this large research collection. Chapter “A New Conversion Method to Evaluate the Hazard Potential of Collaborative Robots in Free Collisions” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.