Robotics for Young Children: STEM Activities and Simple Coding

Introduce young children to the building and programming of robots through playful, developmentally appropriate activities. Many early childhood professionals are unfamiliar with computer science, robotics, and engineering concepts. This user-friendly and accessible book gives teachers great ideas for engaging young children with 100 exciting hands-on computer science and engineering activities. The book can be easily included in a developmentally appropriate curriculum and offers a balance of adult-facilitated and child-centered activities.

Ann Gadzikowski has more than twenty-five years of experience as a teacher and director of early childhood programs, and is the Early Childhood Coordinator for Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development and oversees the summer Leapfrog Program. Her book Creating a Beautiful Mess: Ten Essential Play Experiences for a Joyous Childhood won gold in the 2015 National Parenting Publications Awards.

DIY Drones for the Evil Genius: Design, Build, and Customize Your Own Drones

Publisher’s Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product.


Design, build, and pilot custom drones―no prior experience necessary!

This fun guide shows, step-by-step, how to construct powerful drones from inexpensive parts, add personalized features, and become a full-fledged pilot. DIY Drones for the Evil Genius: Design, Build, and Customize Your Own Drones not only covers safety, mechanics, drone design, and assembly, but also teaches the basics of Aerospace Engineering. You will discover how to add video transmitters, GPS, first-person view, and virtual reality goggles to your creations. The book walks you through the FAA licensing process and takes a look at advanced concepts, such as artificial intelligence and autonomous flight.

• Learn about aircraft parts, control mechanics, and safety practices
• Become an expert pilot―even handle flips and high-speed maneuvers
• Pick the perfect parts for your high-performance drone
• Find out how to solder and start assembling your drone
• Program the aircraft, calibrate the motors, and start flying!
• Add LED lights, GoPro mounts, and self-balancing camera gimbals
• Explore the world of first-person-view (FPV) drones and high-speed racing
• See how artificial intelligence can be put to use in the drone industry

Learn Robotics with Raspberry Pi: Build and Code Your Own Moving, Sensing, Thinking Robots

In Learn Robotics with Raspberry Pi, you’ll learn how to build and code your own robot projects with just the Raspberry Pi microcomputer and a few easy-to-get components – no prior experience necessary!

Learn Robotics with Raspberry Pi will take you from inexperienced maker to robot builder. You’ll start off building a two-wheeled robot powered by a Raspberry Pi minicomputer and then program it using Python, the world’s most popular programming language. Gradually, you’ll improve your robot by adding increasingly advanced functionality until it can follow lines, avoid obstacles, and even recognize objects of a certain size and color using computer vision.

Learn how to:
– Control your robot remotely using only a Wii remote
– Teach your robot to use sensors to avoid obstacles
– Program your robot to follow a line autonomously
– Customize your robot with LEDs and speakers to make it light up and play sounds
– See what your robot sees with a Pi Camera

As you work through the book, you’ll learn fundamental electronics skills like how to wire up parts, use resistors and regulators, and determine how much power your robot needs. By the end, you’ll have learned the basics of coding in Python and know enough about working with hardware like LEDs, motors, and sensors to expand your creations beyond simple robots.

Springer Handbook of Robotics (Springer Handbooks)

The second edition of this handbook provides a state-of-the-art cover view on the various aspects in the rapidly developing field of robotics. Reaching for the human frontier, robotics is vigorously engaged in the growing challenges of new emerging domains. Interacting, exploring, and working with humans, the new generation of robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The credible prospect of practical robots among humans is the result of the scientific endeavour of a half a century of robotic developments that established robotics as a modern scientific discipline. The ongoing vibrant expansion and strong growth of the field during the last decade has fueled this second edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics

The first edition of the handbook soon became a landmark in robotics publishing and won the American Association of Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics as well as the organization’s Award for Engineering & Technology.

The second edition of the handbook, edited by two internationally renowned scientists with the support of an outstanding team of seven part editors and more than 200 authors, continues to be an authoritative reference for robotics researchers, newcomers to the field, and scholars from related disciplines. The contents have been restructured to achieve four main objectives: the enlargement of foundational topics for robotics, the enlightenment of design of various types of robotic systems, the extension of the treatment on robots moving in the environment, and the enrichment of advanced robotics applications. Further to an extensive update, fifteen new chapters have been introduced on emerging topics, and a new generation of authors have joined the handbook’s team.

A novel addition to the second edition is a comprehensive collection of multimedia references to more than 700 videos, which bring valuable insight into the contents. The videos can be viewed directly augmented into the text with a smartphone or tablet using a unique and specially designed app. 

Springer Handbook of Robotics Multimedia Extension Portal: http://handbookofrobotics.org/

How Robotics Is Changing the World (How Science Changed the World)

Robots take over jobs that are too dirty, dull, or dangerous for people. In doing so, they make human lives safer and more interesting. As robots become increasingly capable and intelligent, they are taking on new roles in medical care, education, the military, exploration, and more. Discover what it could be like to live in a world filled with robot companions and helpers.

Robotics, Vision and Control: Fundamental Algorithms In MATLAB, Second Edition (Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics)

Robotic vision, the combination of robotics and computer vision, involves the application of computer algorithms to data acquired from sensors. The research community has developed a large body of such algorithms but for a newcomer to the field this can be quite daunting. For over 20 years the author has maintained two open-source MATLAB® Toolboxes, one for robotics and one for vision. They provide implementations of many important algorithms and allow users to work with real problems, not just trivial examples. This book makes the fundamental algorithms of robotics, vision and control accessible to all. It weaves together theory, algorithms and examples in a narrative that covers robotics and computer vision separately and together. Using the latest versions of the Toolboxes the author shows how complex problems can be decomposed and solved using just a few simple lines of code. The topics covered are guided by real problems observed by the author over many years as a practitioner of both robotics and computer vision. It is written in an accessible but informative style, easy to read and absorb, and includes over 1000 MATLAB and Simulink® examples and over 400 figures. The book is a real walk through the fundamentals of mobile robots, arm robots. then camera models, image processing, feature extraction and multi-view geometry and finally bringing it all together with an extensive discussion of visual servo systems. This second edition is completely revised, updated and extended with coverage of Lie groups, matrix exponentials and twists; inertial navigation; differential drive robots; lattice planners; pose-graph SLAM and map making; restructured material on arm-robot kinematics and dynamics; series-elastic actuators and operational-space control; Lab color spaces; light field cameras; structured light, bundle adjustment and visual odometry; and photometric visual servoing.

 

“An authoritative book, reaching across fields, thoughtfully conceived and brilliantly accomplished!”

OUSSAMA KHATIB, Stanford

Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control

This introduction to robotics offers a distinct and unified perspective of the mechanics, planning and control of robots. Ideal for self-learning, or for courses, as it assumes only freshman-level physics, ordinary differential equations, linear algebra and a little bit of computing background. Modern Robotics presents the state-of-the-art, screw-theoretic techniques capturing the most salient physical features of a robot in an intuitive geometrical way. With numerous exercises at the end of each chapter, accompanying software written to reinforce the concepts in the book and video lectures aimed at changing the classroom experience, this is the go-to textbook for learning about this fascinating subject.

The LEGO Power Functions Idea Book, Volume 1: Machines and Mechanisms

This first volume of The LEGO Power Functions Idea Book, Machines and Mechanisms, showcases small projects to build with LEGO Technic gears, motors, gadgets, and other moving elements. You’ll find hundreds of clever, buildable mechanisms, each one demonstrating a key building technique or mechanical principle.

You’ll learn to build sliding doors, grasping claws, rack-and-pinion mechanisms, and ball-shooting devices of every sort!

Each model includes a list of required parts and colorful photographs that guide you through the build without the need for step-by-step instructions. As you build, you’ll explore the principles of simple machines, gear systems, power translation, and more.

Elements of Robotics

This open access book bridges the gap between playing with robots in school and studying robotics at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels to prepare for careers in industry and research. Robotic algorithms are presented formally, but using only mathematics known by high-school and first-year college students, such as calculus, matrices and probability. Concepts and algorithms are explained through detailed diagrams and calculations.

Elements of Robotics presents an overview of different types of robots and the components used to build robots, but focuses on robotic algorithms: simple algorithms like odometry and feedback control, as well as algorithms for advanced topics like localization, mapping, image processing, machine learning and swarm robotics. These algorithms are demonstrated in simplified contexts that enable detailed computations to be performed and feasible activities to be posed. Students who study these simplified demonstrations will be well prepared for advanced study of robotics.

The algorithms are presented at a relatively abstract level, not tied to any specific robot. Instead a generic robot is defined that uses elements common to most educational robots: differential drive with two motors, proximity sensors and some method of displaying output to the user.

The theory is supplemented with over 100 activities, most of which can be successfully implemented using inexpensive educational robots. Activities that require more computation can be programmed on a computer. Archives are available with suggested implementations for the Thymio robot and standalone programs in Python.