Autonomous Robots: From Biological Inspiration To Implementation And Control

by George A. Bekey

Autonomous robots are intelligent machines capable of performing tasks in the world by themselves, without explicit human control. Examples range from autonomous helicopters to Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner. In this book, George Bekey offers an introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that can be used both in the classroom and as a reference for industry professionals. He surveys the hardware implementations of more than 300 current systems, reviews some of their application areas, and examines the underlying technology, including control, architectures, learning, manipulation, grasping, navigation, and mapping. Living systems can be considered the prototypes of autonomous systems, and Bekey explores the biological inspiration that forms the basis of many recent developments in robotics. He also discusses robot control issues and the design of control architectures. After an overview of the field that introduces some of its fundamental concepts, the book presents background material on hardware, control (from both biological and engineering perspectives), software architecture, and robot intelligence. It then examines a broad range of implementations and applications, including locomotion (wheeled, legged, flying, swimming, and crawling robots), manipulation (both arms and hands), localization, navigation, and mapping. The many case studies and specific applications include robots built for research, industry, and the military, among them underwater robotic vehicles, walking machines with four, six, and eight legs, and the famous humanoid robots Cog, Kismet, ASIMO, and QRIO. The book concludes with reflections on the future of robotics -- the potential benefits as well as the possible dangers that may arise from large numbers of increasingly intelligent and autonomous robots.

Hardcover

First published May 20, 2005

About the author

George A. Bekey was an American roboticist and the professor of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California.
Bekey was born in Bratislava in 1928 before immigrating at the beginning of WW2 to Bolivia before moving to the United States five years later at the age of 17 in 1945.
In 1989, Bekey became a member of the National Academy of Engineering for pioneering work in computer sciences contributing to biomedical engineering, man-machine systems, and robotics. He was also a Fellow of various professional societies.
Bekey is best known for his achievements across multiple technical fields, for which he was designated a USC University Professor, which honors the university's most accomplished, multi-disciplinary faculty. He was also affiliated with the College of Engineering at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he taught a course on world religions.
His most recent book is Autonomous Robots: From Biological Inspiration to Implementation and Control from MIT Press.

Reviews

[Arnoud Visser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prof. Bekey clearly has a lot of knowledge and experience with building advanced control systems for mobile robots and the book was clearly written with a lot of joy. Yet, many subjects are only shortly described, which was OK for robots that I was familiar with. Yet, he also introduced some robots which I had not encountered before (which is great), there it becomes clear that Prof. Bekey expects from reader a lot of background knowledge, because the text did not help much to get familiar with those robots.

So, a nice book, but not deep enough to be used as textbook for a course

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book on the state of Robotics.