Introduction to AI Robotics

I'm not sure what chip "A reader" had on his/her shoulder with the earlier review. I felt this book was exactly what I needed as I slowly work my way into robotics from more mainstream programming. With 10 years of web app development experience, I'm an experienced programmer but know little about architecting software for autonomous robots. This book takes you through different architectural approaches that have been used throughout the past 50 years including relatively current recommendations for hybrid deliberative/reactive solutions along with multi-agent design considerations. This book provides almost the same depth with respect to robotics as Russell/Novig's "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" does for AI in general. Furthermore, Murphy's writing style is easy to follow and enjoyable to read. Although this is only my first robotics-specific book, I believe I chose the perfect place to start; it provides a great spring board for seeking out more in-depth, implementation-focused works.

I wonder how the first reviewers gave so bad comments on the book. I think it is not the author but the first reviewers who mislead the readers. If I took their comments, I would miss a really excellent book.The contents in this book are rich, entensive, systematic and well-organized. One of my colleagues borrowed it from me several times, and finally he ordered another copy himself!We really appreciate the book and the author.

Robin Murphy's book is a one-stop shopping source for AI and Motion planning in mobile robotics. She provides a breadth of topics and puts them in an organized historical context. I plan on using this book as a supplement for my undergraduate course on robotics, as well as my graduate course on motion planning. This book has also inspired me to write a conference on the relationships between architectures and behavior-based methods. The book also contains examples of many up-to-date robots. Barring popular media-style books, this book contains the most vast collection of robots and relates them to the academic principles outlined in the book. Finally, the text contains many useful examples. I like that Dr. Murphy straddles the hobbyist-collegiate border by allowing for earlier examples to be constructed from LEGO Mindstorms.

Well, this may be not especially useful to you, but I also own the book and just wanted to give you a second opinion, which happens to be that Pri$m is completely right. Every single word is true. I don't know what more to write... Maybe just my pre-education: I am fairly familiar with computers and programming, but didn't know too much about robotics prior to reading this book. Nevertheless, it was very interesting and I recommend, too. Buy it if you are interested in the topic!

This book presents a well-thought out and structured introduction to an exciting field. The material is well pitched, well described and always placed in context.Additional information, such as the history of various approaches, timelines, and end of chapter notes, add to the instructional material in the book and provided some insight into the world of the Roboticist.Each concept was described in sufficient detail for someone who, like me, was looking for a reasonably detailed overview of the field before becoming more involved, and provided sufficient detail to motivate a reader to experiment on their own, and accomplish a great deal. Once, however, you decide that you wish to dig further, a more specialised book in a particular sub-field might be advisable.The book also ends with a chapter on the future of the field, which was interesting as well as useful.One annoying thing about the book was that, as a first edition, it contained many spelling and word omission errors. While none of these individually impacted my appreciation of the book, they did interrupt of the flow of some chapters.Overall, though, an excellent and exciting text.