Customer Reviews

How to Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Daniel Wilson, robotics PhD, presents us with his third book regarding technology. He originally taught us how to survive when the robots eventually rise up against us in How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion. Now that we know how to defeat the robots, we can use them to defend us as we must be aware of other dangers such as zombies, ninjas, aliens, Godzilla, pirates, and great white sharks to name a few. Wilson's ideas are scientifically sound and completely viable as he uses his knowledgeable background in robotics for his writing. He mixes in humorous scenarios based on cliched Hollywood movies to give the reader a light spirited trip through a robotics debriefing lesson and where the world stands in robotic advancements. Not quite as funny as the first book but just as informative. The book itself is made of foil-edged glossy pages and filled with silhouetted artwork that stands out on its own. It's entertaining, educational, and amusing to read. Also check out Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived to round out his writing collection.

Daniel H Wilson has a very unique style of writing. His first two books How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion and Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived were absolutely brilliant, masterpieces in fact. How to Build a Robot Army although still good, when compared to those other two books doesn't come anywhere near to jumping over the extremely high benchmark already set. The other books have a lot more humour and spend a little less time on the technical side and explain it in a lot more entertaining way than this. If you haven't read Wilson's previous two books I would suggest reading them first.

Richard Horne (the illustrator) has done another magnificent job with this volume though. I can't fault him at all.

How to Build a Robot Army is basically using your everyday robot companions to combat the Hollywood threat scenarios of aliens, vampires, Jaws and other unwanted visitors.

Although Wilson stumbled to maintain his high benchmark with his third effort, Wilson's fourth book Mad Scientist Hall of Fame: Muwahahahaha! will be worth checking out.

This book was probably what you would expect - pretty silly and very nerdy. If you're actually plotting something sinister with robots you should probably look elsewhere. As an engineer, I thought there might have been a couple inaccuracies, but overall very informative. The pictures are also pretty funny.

I don't see this winning any literary awards, but probably a good gift for the nerd in your family.

Wilson reviews the latest robotics technology and creatively tackles how we might best use it to conquer some of our most-feared enemies: Zombies, aliens, etc. While the read is light and hilarious, the advice is good and the science is sound. A someone who doesn't read anything like Popular Mechanics, this was also a neat update on real military robotics progress. I never knew that I might need to trick out my roomba to kill alien home invaders, but now I know how!

I read the library book and its awesome! Daniel H. Wilson Ph.D. makes science funny and interesting. I didn't know how to convert a car into a unmanned ground vehicle, now i do. but, i haven't done that to my dad's car yet.

Very good read. Funny and you might learn something without even realizing it. In addition, you will be prepared for the invasion when it happens.

I bought this for my brother for Christmas. He is still talking about it. Great book

This book was quite amusing and included tips on building robot warriors from very simple attack bots to highly sophisticated ones. However, it was not as good as Daniel Wilson's earlier gem, "How to survive a Robot Uprising".

I purchased this book after reading "How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion". HTSARU:TODYATCR was a wonderfully funny book, this book lacks the humor of the first book and really doesn't seem to contain the background research of the first book.

I'd say give this one a pass. Get "How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion" instead, it is a far better book or "The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead" by Max Brooks, both are similar, but superior.

If you're a mad scientist looking for pointers, or some techno-geek trying to take over the world, this book really isn't good for much besides a few pointers. The author details a few types of robots, including humanoid robots and intelligent vacuum cleaners. However, it's fairly vague after that.

I wasn't planning on building an army when I got the book, but I was hoping for a bit more than "well, you could try this..."