Customer Reviews

Robot Building for Beginners (Technology in Action)

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I looked around quite a bit trying to find a robot building book that would take my 14 yr old through the process in a way he could understand. David Cook delivered perfectly. Every other book I looked at seemed either too childish, or alternately, assumed a solid background in electronics. Robot Building for Beginners, like Baby Bear's porridge, is just right!

I studied philosophy in college, so can offer my son no help in building robots. I've seen this book described as a swimming pool that's 5'x5' but 25' deep. That's pretty apt. I like the extensive chapter on components - what they are, how they work - neither my son nor I knew a resistor from a diode before. Also an entire chapter on safety was great from the concerned parent perspective.

The book is long, but covers a lot of ground with very little fluff. In 10 days my son had read up to the chapter where you start building your robot - he had absorbed a ton of information, built a few basic circuits and tested/troubleshot them with a multimeter. Now he's just waiting impatiently for me to set him up with the necessary components to start building (actually he's started scavenging components from dead/unused electronics he comes across; and I'm starting to fear for my DVD player).

I don't think you'll find a better starting point for a novice.

David Cook, an engineering manager at Motorola with 20 years of experience in software development, has written the ultimate beginner's book on the construction and troubleshooting of robots and all types of electronic construction. It is designed for the absolute beginner to practical electronic and basic mechanical construction by someone who like myself received an overly theoretical education. It can certainly also be mastered by interested high school student or teenage enthusiast. All phases of electronic construction and troubleshooting as well as a variety of mechanical and shop techniques are described and exquisitely illustrated by high-quality (black and white) photographs. While the book culminates and supplies all necessary information to construct a simple but fully autonomous line-following robot, I believe that the successfully achieved important objective of the book is to develop the range of electronic and mechanical skills necessary for further advancement in any robotic project and almost any electronic construction endeavor. To many books in this exciting and rapidly expanding field either provide step by step details of the construction of particular projects, or are largely theoretical in content.

By contrast, this clear and well illustrated beginners guide develops the skills and basic theoretical understanding of electronic construction and mechanics to achieve initial success and grow in knowledge with any robotic project and in a variety of hobbyist electronics. I would recommend it to any aspiring beginner in robotics and electronic construction as the basis mastering an exciting hobby or practical engineering pursuit.

--Ira Laefsky
MSE/MBA IT Consultant

To me robot kits leave me feeling disappointed and turned off. I mean u buy a kit, assemble it, learn next to nothing, and then the robot just does one thing and u quickly tire of it. These 2 books (especially the 2nd one) turn robotics into an open-ended hobby and a continuous source of education and experimentation. With kits, they do nothing until you are done and then only do one thing. But the way David Cook presents it, you learn all the time, you test little pieces and watch and learn how the parts work and how to make changes in the design. These 2 books are the best robotics books I have ever bought!

This book is perfect for what it is intended to do, which is to teach someone that's never built a robot before how to do it. I had assembled (meaning screwed together) a few "robot" kits before attempting the project in this book, but this is the book I used to build my first true robot.

Having done the first project in Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots as well, I can definitely say that this is the better FIRST choice, because the other book requires a lot of mechanical skills which I do not have. This book only requires that you follow directions and practice soldering a little before you take on the circuit board here (to get soldering practice, I used the Elenco AmeriKit Learn to Solder Kit).

Having built three or four robots since completing this book, I still feel that the Sandwich robot that this book discusses is still my favorite -- it's neat watching something you built follow a line on the floor, and change its lights to match what it sees on the ground! I've bought the Intermediate sequel to this book and will gladly work on it soon, because I definitely recommend this book. It will be hours of fun and will give you something to look at lovingly when you place your first home-built robot on the shelf!

The book does a great job of pacing the material and explaining things so that a beginner can understand. It goes through the parts and components you will need to be able to understand and identify in order to be able to build a robot then walks you through step by step on how to build your first line following robot. David also does a great job of giving the reader information on tools and components as well as providing good information on how/where to obtain parts.

I'm taking a mechatronics and robotics class at Humboldt State University. We were allowed to choose our own project for the semester. I bought this book back in January and read through (devoured) it in just a couple nights. It takes you step by step through a robot building project in a very logical and detailed manner. Some of the material is very basic and was review for me, but I read through it anyway. Mr. Cook explains every single component and what its function is in the 'bot. He even goes so far as to suggest suppliers and what their prices were at the time of writing. His thorough explanations and descriptions will be a recipe to be closely followed by somebody who is just getting their feet wet in assembling "stuff" (an entire chapter dedicated just to soldering!). For more seasoned mechanics and tinkerers, he provides room for artistic license and a great foundation for a really cool project.

The semester is drawing to a close, my 'bot mother board is done and functioning, and I'm now building the body/chassis. Though I'm not using the same "sandwich" box design Mr. Cook did, I owe him a debt of gratitude for writing such a wonderfully insightful and thorough book. Without the electronic "guts" it would just be another push toy.

I bought this book for my 16 year old son, it helped him understand all the details and material needed to build a robot from scratch.

I had absolutely no background in electronics, so I was very happy to find this book when I decided to undertake a robotics project with my children. This is a book ideal for someone (like me) who really needs a step-by-step for each component, with a full explanation of what it is, how to read the markings, how to test it, how to install it and so forth. I am proud to say we managed to build our own (very personalized) version of sandwitch and it works perfectly.

I do have one criticism with respect to the kindle version, however: kindle is not very good for pictures, and the schematics in the book often appear in very small printing and kindle does not have a function to enlarge them. So, if the author and the editors want to publish and sell this as a "kindle version", they should at least bother to recreate the schematics in a more "reader friendly version for kindle". Revising the book so that instead of referring to a certain page it refers to a location (since kindle doesn't deal with pages) would also be very helpful.

Aside from these problems, which refer to the editing and not to the contents of the book, I did love it, it was extremely helfpful and also very entertaining, and I already bought the "sequel" - but unfortunately, also in kindle version...

This is one great book. I have enjoyed reading it I'm 14 and it is great for starting in the robotics. I have some knowledge in the electronics line so it had some stuff in it that I know. But nothing wrong in reading it again. This is a easy to understand book with lots of pictures of his stuff. One thing that I really like is that he has a section of it that he writes about his own mistakes. Great book!

I have gone through the first few chapters of this book. I can not wait to sink my teeth into the rest of the book and make a robot.