Customer Reviews

Robotics, Mechatronics, and Artificial Intelligence: Experimental Circuit Blocks for Designers

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

 

 

This is a good ref. for, in particular hobbyists and students, where a collection of useful practical examples can be found. However, I spotted quite a number of errors (both typing errors and errors in circuit diagrams such as wrong pin no., incorrect connection point or polarity). For inexperience users, following exactly some of the circuits may result in producing smoke factory. I would like to recommend to recheck and correct some of these errors. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 stars partly because of these errors.

Robotics, Mechatronics and Artificial Intelligence may be an odd title for this book, as, while most of the circuit blocks are certainly usable in robotics, there are very few where a robot would be the primary use. There are circuits for anything from Touch Lamps and Light Dimmers through to the more robotic circuits like the particularly good chapter on H-Bridges. There are blocks which cover a good number of uses in robotics and mechatronics, but I don't know exactly where he gets the AI bit of his title.

One thing the title got exactly right though was 'Experimental Ciruit Blocks'. There were a number of errors in type but, more importantly if you're using this book as a reference, the schematics. Things like in the "how to use transistors" chapter he more than once mixes his PNP and NPN transistors. Nearly all of the blocks are fine, just keep on your toes.

For anyone who is new to robotics or interfacing motors in general, this book will be well received.

What I liked about it is the way it encourages the use of electrical principles to achieve common robotics goals over microcontroller based control. (If you want your robot to come on at night and stay off during the day for example, just use a switching circuit with an LDR or similar device. Why program something that's not necessary).

There is a section on micro processors but it's rather rudimentary and to be honest could probably be skipped over.

The true value of this book comes from the hardware circuits which are instantly accessible out of the box.

I found it a handy reference with great simple circuits that would certainly save a student or casual experimenter a lot of time and hence the title of the book.

This book would be useful on the bookshelf of most robotics enthusiasts and for the price is highly recommended(there were great circuits in this book that could take 4 chapters in some books to get to the point. This book illustrates them in a page, simple straight forward and ready to go which is what this book is about).

If your after the finer points on robotics and prefer a more in depth break down of electrical cicuits (right down to transistor biasing calculations and designing your own switching circuits for complex feedback hardware then this book might not be for you), however even for the advanced robotics enthusiast I'm sure this would be a handy collection of circuits for quick easy reference.

I recommend it and if later on the author was to add a few chapters on programming interfaces for embedded controllers, this book would certainly get a 5 star rating.

Enjoy,
Sean A. Curtin