An Introduction to AI Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents) [Hardcover]

Robin R. Murphy (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262133830 | ISBN-13: 978-0262133838 | Publication Date: November 13, 2000 | Edition: 1st

This text covers all the material needed to understand the principles behind the AI approach to robotics and to program an artificially intelligent robot for applications involving sensing, navigation, planning, and uncertainty. Robin Murphy is extremely effective at combining theoretical and practical rigor with a light narrative touch. In the overview, for example, she touches upon anthropomorphic robots from classic films and science fiction stories before delving into the nuts and bolts of organizing intelligence in robots.Following the overview, Murphy contrasts AI and engineering approaches and discusses what she calls the three paradigms of AI robotics: hierarchical, reactive, and hybrid deliberative/reactive. Later chapters explore multiagent scenarios, navigation and path-planning for mobile robots, and the basics of computer vision and range sensing. Each chapter includes objectives, review questions, and exercises. Many chapters contain one or more case studies showing how the concepts were implemented on real robots. Murphy, who is well known for her classroom teaching, conveys the intellectual adventure of mastering complex theoretical and technical material.An Instructor's Manual including slides, solutions, sample tests, and programming assignments is available to qualified professors who are considering using the book or who are using the book for class use.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robin R. Murphy is Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: A Bradford Book; 1st edition (November 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262133830
• ISBN-13: 978-0262133838
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 8.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #791,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where's the editor?, February 14, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: An Introduction to AI Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents) (Hardcover)

This book is an unedited nightmare.

Dr. Choset's glowing review(s) might be taken with a grain of salt, given that he serves as "Director of Research Outreach" beneath the author at CRASAR.

While the language is suitable for a novice, it is plagued by errors both grammatical and technical. While the former (at roughly one per page) are merely distracting, the latter often incorrectly change the sense entirely.

Code snippets masquerade as "C or C++", but aren't suitable even as pseudo code. Luckily, most are trivial enough that mistakes become obvious, but missing cases and lack of any error handling whatsoever mean that you're not going to be typing examples into an editor. In addition, many assume a machine state but don't show this initialization. This might be excusable had the code been lifted directly from source, but half the time backslashes are used to begin comments!

A few examples from a chapter on vision:

"Consumer digital cameras post an analog signal, but the update rate is too slow at this time for real-time reactive robot control."

"Most commercial devices in the U.S. use a NTSC (television) standard. Color is expressed as the sum of three measurements: red, green, and blue."

"red = image_red[row][col];
red = image_green[row][col];
red = image_blue[row][col];
display_color(red, green, blue);"

"His Cybermotion robot was one of the first to navigate in hallways using vision; in this case, a technique known as a Hough (pronounced "huff") transform. In the early 1990's, with slow hardware, the robot could go 8 to 9 meters per second."

Hint: The robot platform isn't capable of going 1/10 that speed. Such mistakes are so common that one wonders whether she just couldn't be bothered to do the research and resorted to making it up.

This book may be okay for a casual read and it does have the endnotes going for it, but don't use it as a textbook unless you enjoy confusing students. If you're serious about behavior-based robotics, get Arkin.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Introductory Text, February 11, 2001

By 

Pri$m (Johannesburg, South Africa (temporarily Amherst, MA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Introduction to AI Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents) (Hardcover)

This book presents a well-thought out and structured introduction to an exciting field. The material is well pitched, well described and always placed in context.

Additional information, such as the history of various approaches, timelines, and end of chapter notes, add to the instructional material in the book and provided some insight into the world of the Roboticist.

Each concept was described in sufficient detail for someone who, like me, was looking for a reasonably detailed overview of the field before becoming more involved, and provided sufficient detail to motivate a reader to experiment on their own, and accomplish a great deal. Once, however, you decide that you wish to dig further, a more specialised book in a particular sub-field might be advisable.

The book also ends with a chapter on the future of the field, which was interesting as well as useful.

One annoying thing about the book was that, as a first edition, it contained many spelling and word omission errors. While none of these individually impacted my appreciation of the book, they did interrupt of the flow of some chapters.

Overall, though, an excellent and exciting text.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horror of mistakes, February 8, 2004

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: An Introduction to AI Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents) (Hardcover)

I bought this book in hopes to learn something about AI Robotics (as the title misleads you to believe). I found only mistakes. One after another. It is clear that this woman does not know much about robotics, and was just in a hurry to get a book published. STAY AWAY from this one.