Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots

by Gareth Branwyn

Finally, a robots book for people who don't know the first thing about robotics! Absolute Beginner's Guide to Robots is well-written, inviting, and action-packed, with engaging ideas and fascinating factoids about robots and robot-related arts and sciences. You are led gently into the intimidating world of robotics, but nearly 400 pages later, you emerge with a respectable knowledge of robot history, the major fields and "schools" of robotics today, and the basic skills and resources needed to create hobby robots. By the end of the book, you will be the proud owner of three bots, the first two of which demonstrate key robotic principles. The third is a programmable/expandable robot, which serves as a platform for future experimentation. And best of all, these robots are built with simple to get and inexpensive parts - many of which you already have around the house!

Genres: Robots

382 pages, Paperback

First published September 19, 2003

About the author

Gareth Branwyn is a writer, editor, and media critic.

He has covered technology, media, DIY, and cyberculture for Wired, Esquire, the Baltimore Sun, Details, and numerous other publications. He was an editor at Mondo 2000 and Boing Boing (when it was a print zine), founded the personal tech site, StreetTech.com, and worked for MAKE magazine for 8 years, lastly acting as their Editorial Director.

Gareth co-edited The Happy Mutant Handbook (with Boing Boing) and is the author of Jargon Watch: A Pocket Dictionary for the Jitterati, Jamming the Media, The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots, and Mosaic Quick Tour: Accessing and Navigating the World Wide Web (the first book written about the Web). His most recent book, a collection of his best work, with many new essays, is called Borg Like Me & Other Tales of Art, Eros, and Embedded Systems. The book was crowd-funded and self-published.

Reviews

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gareth Branwyn does a solid job of delivering on the title’s promise. The book includes a brief history of the field, followed by some basic theory. But for the most part it’s pure tech guide, introducing the tools of the trade (or at least the hobby) and then supplying the step-by-step for three robot projects of progressive difficulty.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, I have not done the projects yet. But I picked up one of the recommend reading books about electricity (will post name when I have a chance) and I have down some Soldering (the book states practice practice practice) plus I need to by tools in the future to help with the projects. I will get back to that.

[Dan]

Persons denying the existence of robots may be robots themselves.

[Erika]

Good resource for the noob, I think. just started, but has some good directions on basic soldering, and good intro to theory too