Customer Reviews

Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Over all, I would say this is the best source for understanding mechanics and control theory as it relates to robotics motion. It really gets into the details that books on the subject of computational robots such as "Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots" and "Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics" simply do not have the room to accommodate. Chapters two and three go into great detail on the matrix transformations and geometry necessary to relate one frame of motion to another. Chapter four is the best chapter on the subject of inverse kinematics that I have found in print. This chapter tackles the difficult problem of answering the question: "Given starting point A and stopping point B, what forces must come to bear on a particular robotic arm to get from A to B?" Chapter five introduces the very important matrix entity entitled the Jacobian, which is necessary for the study of both velocities and static forces. Once again, the computational robotics books in print mention the Jacobian and use the Jacobian, but none I have encountered actually bother to explain it as this book does. Chapters six and seven round out the discussion of mechanics with tutorials on the subject of manipulator dynamics. Chapter eight is less mathematical, and it deals with the mechanical design of robot elements. A background in mechanics of materials would be helpful for understanding this chapter, but you can still get through it even without it. Finally, chapters nine through eleven deal with control theory and the modeling of robot manipulators. The math gets a bit sparse in these chapters, and I don't think that the level of explanation is as good here as it is in the first eight chapters dealing with mechanics. Chapters twelve and thirteen deal with robot programming systems and should be understandable by anyone with some computer programming experience. The book is full of worked numerical examples and exercises with the solutions to selected exercises given in the back of the book. The book also has many Matlab programming exercises, which is great since most mathematical robotics problems are too complex to solve without Matlab. The only part of the book that I found somewhat weak in the least bit would be the chapters on control theory.

In summary, to really appreciate this book you should already have some background in engineering mechanics - say a course in both statics and dynamics, and also some understanding of control theory, with a desire to apply this knowledge specifically to computational issues in robotics. You cannot be a robotic hobbyist and tinkerer with no background in engineering or mathematics and gain much from this book. From reading the other reviews, I think this misunderstanding might be where some of the bad ratings are coming from.

The textbook attempts to cover basic kinematics, forward and backward chaining through the Euclidean approach to describe DH conventions, torque, and so forth. The first three chapters would lead one to expect an excellent textbook, and then the textbook descends into a nightmare.

The notation is cobbled together from so many different disciplines, we had to make study sheets to figure out what was said. There is no summary of formula or notation. Once there are a dozen notations in play, the typos begin. In chapter six alone, we counted over a dozen formulas with the wrong symbols or missing terms.

Even with these flaws, the book fails to deliver. The first half of the book has a theme: using transforms on DH conventions to derive position, accelleration, force and torque. Chapter seven covers a number of trajectory planning algorithms. The rest of the book adopts new notation and slowly explores control methods, stretching out simple solutions over many chapters. At the end, the reader still has no idea how to evaluate between the various control methods presented, aside from learning that more modeling is better. No alternatives are presented to the author's single thread, and the book misses concepts such as variable gains, force field collision avoidence, calibration, and Keynes notation.

There is a good topic in here screaming to get out. If you delve past the first four chapters, you will be screaming to get out.

My advice to any student who finds that this book is required course material is to choose a different class. The instructor who chooses this book demonstrates very poor judgment.

Its introduction says this book "evolved from class notes." It hasn't evolved very far. It's sloppy, outdated, and badly typeset. None of the topics are adequately developed: 14 pages, for instance, is totally inadequate to develop control theory. Few of the references are more recent than 1990, and some of the text is almost laughably obsolete, like the paragraph discussing the expense of maintaining a table of sines in memory. (Craig cites a reference from 1981 when discussing the computation of trigonometric functions.)

While it describes itself as a book on robotics in general, this is really a book on the analysis of manipulator arms. If you are interested in other types of robotic systems, like semi-autonomous vehicles, prepare for disappointment. And if you are interested in the analysis of manipulator arms, prepare for disappointment anyway. This is a very difficult book to follow, due to the author's inconsistencies in notation and superficial coverage of important topics.

Ordinarily, the cues indicating that TeX has been used to prepare a book are subtle: good looking page layout and lots of well-formatted formulae. In this case, sadly, the book is peppered with obvious TeX mistakes. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the worked exercises in the back, where typos seem to have swallowed several section headings, and in one place "quad" has actually been printed where there was supposed to be a space (\quad). The author teaches at Stanford; if I were Donald Knuth, I would visit his office and ask him kindly to stop abusing my typesetting system.

This book reflects badly on the otherwise well-regarded Stanford robotics program, as well as on Pearson press, who should fire whoever edited this mess.

The first 3 chapters begin very well giving the reader decent examples with how to derive frame assignments and forward kinematic matrices. Starting with chapter 4, the book begins to descend into a nightmare of ambiguity and frustration. Typos begin cropping up every where. The author then begins to take short cuts with deriving particular formulas with no clear explanation how those formulas are derived. One example is when the author begins to explain how to solve for an inverse kinematics problem and says to use the law of cosines, but then writes a formula that is not the law of cosines with no clarification how he came to that point. Homework problems are also given, but do not reflect the few examples given within the chapter leaving the reader in a very difficult position and in most cases unable to solve the problem. I would highly recommend getting a book other than this one. If it is required for a class, make sure the teacher has sufficient supplemental material that will augment the many failings this text has.

This is the worst textbook I have ever read. It was assigned for an introductory robotics class I took and it proved to be a very bad experience. The book starts fine with its treatment of rotation and translation matrices, since that topic is simple enough, but somewhere in the sections on kinematics and certainly by the section on Jacobians (conveniently after the drop deadline for my class), the book becomes impossible to follow and therefore worthless. The chapters have rocky progression between topics and later chapters rely heavily on his notation and conventions which are briefly introduced in random places in the beginning of the book (like c12 which apparently means cos(x1)cos(x2)-sin(x1)sin(x2) or something like that). I am lead to believe that these are nonstandard because my professor had his own notation which was different. The book's examples are not helpful because they lose all generality and dont even make an attempt to guide you through problem solving strategies. In one such instance, a rotation matrix is presented with entries like 0.866025, instead of 'sin(60)' which would have given the reader some hint as to how it was derived. Throughout the book the examples lose generality in similar fashion and are of no help with the homework problems, which are rated on a Knuth-style scale of 1-50 for relative difficulty. I guess he thinks it is funny to include unsolved research problems (denoted by 50) in the middle of the review problems, I thought it was annoying. These review problems are even more ambiguous than the examples. They will ask things like 'solve the inverse kinematics of a manipulator.' Well, is that a matrix? Table? Is it a function of the angle? It was sort of evident after I got the solutions back what they wanted but I couldn't figure out what to do when working on the problems initially, even after scouring the text and examples for some clue. I think the problem is that the book is based on lecture notes and I guess he figures it is a good companion for his class, which im sure it is, but it wasnt helpful for my class. It has exactly one useful table, which is the one on inverse kinematic equations, and is the only part of the book I will be keeping. If the book is required, then you dont really have a choice, but don't pick up this book if you think you are just going to pick up robotics in your spare time.

I had nothing but problems with this book. First off, Craig uses modified DH conventiom, not the standard convention. Anyone that has used any non Craig book needs to know that ahead of time as Craig mentions "other methods" in passing but makes it sound like his the official version, which it's not. At least not outside industrial robotics for sure. His explainations are inadequate at best. He uses methods for dynamics that are more computer code oriented, and don't really give you a feel for what is happening as a whole. It's definitely not how you would want to do these problems on paper. And if all you had to learn dynamics from was this book, the method is probably the least of your concerns. And some examples would be nice. I gave it two stars because if you treat the book as an industrial robotics primer and not a primary source of robotics equations, it might not be so bad. It does have some interesting to read sections and it did introduce me to a matlab toolbox which I found useful, although it does not always play nice with the modified DH, it does have a modified option for some of its features.

I had this book for an Intro to Robotics class I took. And I must say, this is by far the worst textbook I've ever read. It is dense, confusing, and hard to read. There are typos everywhere. When it is laying out problems and equations, it likes to skip a few steps and assume you can follow along. To sum it up, this book is useless.

Seriously, if you are going to take a course and this book is required, don't take the course. If the prof was any good they wouldn't pick this book.

Many of the example problems take short cuts while trying to explain the material through practical problems. When reading the book one is forced to constantly, turn the pages backward for previous references in order to understand the short cuts. The book is in need of some serious editing. Nevertheless, not all engineering books get better with editing. Spotts, machine design, for example in the 6th edition is a Great Book! In the 8th edition, it is useless. This book has the potential to be a good textbook. However, in this form it is just about 3 pounds of paper and cardboard with a fancy cover. Not the worst textbook ever, but it made the list.

This book has a complete set of tools for working with manipulators and other kind of robots, but be carefull... If you know nothing about analytic geometry and linear algebra you probably will not understand nothing in this text.

I used in my college for a discipline called Robotic Systems: Dynamics and Control, in my last period and liked.

good luck

Opened the book for the first time when it arrived and it cracked, then sections of pages began to break apart and fall out. Had to three hole punch the whole book in order to keep it together.