The Definitive Guide to Building Java Robots (Definitive Guides) [Hardcover]

Scott Preston (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590595564 | ISBN-13: 978-1590595565 | Publication Date: November 17, 2005 | Edition: 1

The Definitive Guide to Building Java Robots is for educators, students, hobbyists, and start-ups looking to program a robot with Java.

This book is an in-depth guide to the APIs used for programming robots ranging from microcontrollers to speech & vision.

For more information about this book visit the authors site: scottsbots.com.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

This was my first book. I had the idea for this book while vacationing in South Africa during Christmas of 2004, then 10 months later and a few robots it was published.

I had a great experience with APress and hope to write another book for them again.

About the Author

Scott Preston is a software craftsman and roboticist from Columbus, Ohio. Over the past decade he has worked for some of the largest companies in the world and built & programmed lots of robots. When he's not working on a new robot project, he consults and solves hard problems for customers at his company CodeGin LLC, which he founded in 2010. He is also a renowned robotics speaker and has spoken at many events large and small to promote robotics. You can find out more about Scott's robot projects by visiting his website: scottsbots.com.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 440 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (November 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590595564
• ISBN-13: 978-1590595565
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #708,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scott Preston is a software craftsman and roboticist from Columbus, Ohio. Over the past decade he has worked for some of the largest companies in the world and built & programmed lots of web sites and robots. When he's not working on a new robot or web project, he consults and solves hard problems for customers at his company CodeGin LLC, which he founded in 2010. He is also a renowned speaker and has spoken at many events large and small to promote web development and robotics. You can find out more about Scott by visiting his website: http://www.scottpreston.com or his robot project site http://www.scottsbots.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK high-level guide to Java control of robots, January 12, 2006

By 

calvinnme - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Definitive Guide to Building Java Robots (Definitive Guides) (Hardcover)

It is really difficult to rate this book. If you are a hobbyist who is somewhat Java-savvy and you are looking for a book that gives you rather non-complex code that performs complex tasks primarily by harnessing the power of native as well as open source Java API's, I would give this book four stars. If you are looking for some technical or computational details on some of the interesting topics that the author covers I would give it two stars since there is very little of that in this book. Therefore, considering all possible audiences, I give it 3 stars, or an average rating. This book is not a tutorial on the Java API's that it mentions, but it is the only book I know of that even talks about how to do anything with speech synthesis or voice recognition in Java using the free implementation of the Java Speech API, which is FreeTTS. I actually tried out some of the author's Java speech programs, and they do work as advertised. The author performs his interesting tasks by harnessing the Java Beans activation framework, the Java Communications API for serial port communication, FreeTTS and Sphinx API's for speech applications, the Java Advanced Imaging API and Java Media Framework for computer vision and camera control, and the servlet and JSP API for more complex control of a robot. He has even written his own package that pulls together all of these API's to perform integrated tasks, such as object recognition that integrates image processing, camera control, and speech recognition. Thus, I recommend this for a hobbyist who already knows Java and wants to use that language to control robots at a very high system-level. I do not recommend this book for people looking for theory or algorithms related to the topic of robot control. I notice that Amazon does not show the table of contents so I do that here:
1. A Primer
2. Serial Communication
3. Motion
4. Sensors
5. Speech
6. Vision
7. Navigation
8. Other Topics
9. Sample Programs
A. Definitive Guide API (Author's Software)
B. Microcontroller Reference
C. Robot Parts Reference

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Way To Get Started Quickly, January 10, 2006

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Definitive Guide to Building Java Robots (Definitive Guides) (Hardcover)

To go with this book be sure to visit www.scottsbots.com. Here you will find color pictures and additional description of the various robots described in the book. (There might also be an update or two to the software presented in the book).

This is one of the few books around that combine both software (Java in this case) and hardware design. Building working robots require both, and here both are presented, although the real focus of the book is on the software. The hardware is specialty modules that are designed to handle various robotic functions common in modern robotics. These include fairly complex subjects such as speech and vision.

The focus of the book, however is on the software. The hardware items basically are only converters that change sensed input into a stream of bits, or take a stream of bits and then convert them into motion, speech or whatever. Accepting this kind of input and outputting the appropriate control secquences is the subject of this book. It is a book that summarizes currently available components and works with them to make functioning units.

It's a great place to start learning about or working in robotics.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book on this subject., March 19, 2007

By 

A. Amendolare (NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Definitive Guide to Building Java Robots (Definitive Guides) (Hardcover)

If you want to control a microprocessor with your PC using Java programs then this is the book to show you how.

You will need to know Java in order to understand the programs. You'll have to set up the Java communications Api, which is just a matter of downloading it from the Sun website and then placing the files in the correct directories on you PC.

He illustrates the use of the Basic Stamp II [...]. This is a great microprocessor to get started with because it's very easy to use and they have great support for beginners. You don't need to know how to program the Basic Stamp as a prerequisite, you can learn this while doing it using a very simple dialect of Basic programming. You can also use the same microprocessor programs he wrote for the Stamp for use with PicBasic, (with some editing) since they're very similar.

You don't need experience programming microprocessors, you learn as you do.
You do need to know Java in order to understand the PC programs written in Java. Even without previous Java experience you can still compile and run the programs from this book and make the "Robots".