Robots, Androids and Animatrons: 12 Incredible Projects You Can Build

February 7, 2011
author |
John Iovine
year published |
2001

In Robots, Androids and Animatrons: 12 Incredible Projects You Can Build, electronics expert John Iovine serves up easy-to-follow plans and step-by-step instructions for constructing your very own state-of-the-art working robot that will obey your orders, act as your surrogate and even do scores of tough chores. You’ll find everything you need to harness the latest robotics technologies — locomotion, sensing and control — to develop a high-tech robot, animatron or android in your own home workshop.

The book assumes the reader has an engineering background and a budget for this hobby. It leads the reader through the design of a lifelike robotic hand/arm that performs repetitive tasks; a computerized robot that uses both an expert system and a neural network — for some very unexpected behavior; a robotic insect with a “brain”; a telepresence robot you can “get inside of” with actual arcade and virtual reality applications. It teaches how to take advantage of sensing systems — tilt, bump, road and wall, light, speech, recognition, sound — even odors and gases. The author claims this can be accomplished without programming or assembly language skills.