Keywords
Citation
Billingsley, J. (2005), "Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots: Inside the mind of an intelligent machine", Industrial Robot, Vol. 32 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2005.04932bae.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots: Inside the mind of an intelligent machine
John M. Holland2004352 p.ISBN 0-7506-7683-3£35.00http://books.elsevier.com/bookscat/links/details.asp?isbn=0750676833
Keywords: Robotics, Cybernetics
This is not a book for the lecture theatre or laboratory, so much as for a leather armchair and a decanter of port. John Holland, founder and president of Cybermotion, shares his philosophical approach to robot navigation, liberally sprinkled with reminiscences and anecdotes. As he says in his foreword, “This is not a book full of complex equations”, “Nor is this a book about how to build a robot”.
We are led gently through the trials and tribulations of designing the navigation strategy for a robot that can roam about on guard duty. “Sensory integration” is covered abundantly, but without the use of the buzzword. When two sensors disagree, how do you decide which to believe? The properties of pain, fear and confidence can be represented as parameters in a navigation system, influencing the choice of route selected by the robot.
I suspect, however, that the title's extension was suggested by the publisher. The theme of the book is really “Inside the mind of John Holland”. But do not let that give you the impression that there are not a lot of valuable words of wisdom here. After reading the chapter that grumbled about the shortcomings of Visual Basic as a real-time language, I realised that the elusive bug in my vision OCX was probably due to the “Freddy; I'm back” syndrome that he describes.
Tucked into the back of the book is a CD, with a searchable file of the text and a number of video files showing the Cyberguard robot in action. There are also some snippets of code to illustrate examples in the text.
John BillingsleyUniversity of Southern Queensland