Arduino Robotics

by John-David Warren, Josh Adams, Harald Molle

This book will show you how to use your Arduino to control a variety of different robots, while providing step-by-step instructions on the entire robot building process. You'll learn Arduino basics as well as the characteristics of different types of motors used in robotics. You also discover controller methods and failsafe methods, and learn how to apply them to your project. The book starts with basic robots and moves into more complex projects, including a GPS-enabled robot, a robotic lawn mower, a fighting bot, and even a DIY Segway-clone. Please note: the print version of this title is black & white; the eBook is full color.

Genres: Technology, Technical, Nonfiction

652 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2011

Reviews

[Jeanne Boyarsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Arduino Robotics" is meant for an advanced audience. While the first three chapters do provided a review/intro to electronics, arduino and hardware, there is too much to absorb if you weren't at least familiar with it at one point.

For building advanced projects, it is very good. There are detailed instructions, a parts list, schematic and picture of the board. I like that there was an emphasis on safety. I also like how they explained in detail how to physically build things.

Normally, I criticize a book for having pages of code in a row. In this case, the code was commented so it wasn't bad. And in chapter 11, where the code was even more involved, the author did break it up with additional explanation.

This book was written by three authors and it is one of the books that you can tell was assembled that way. For example on page 28, I found the long comments hard to follow because they wrap lines while later in the book that problem goes away. Some code examples have a background to highlight being code and others do not. In one place there are 5 levels of if statements (presumably to avoid the && operator) and in others the code is written "normally." The authors do write in first person so "I" changes identify but makes it easier to connect with the project creator.

Overall, I was happy with the book. The written by committee wasn't too distracting. And the projects/review area great.

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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.

[Rarian Rakista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just used this as a guide for high school students for a summer program.

Has excellent tutorials and an appendix that isn't auto-generated like many similar books have nowadays.

This is the dead tree version.

[Ken Sharp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the advanced robots at the end were interesting, but the rest of the bots were just more of the beginner stuff you can find in 50 different places on the Internet.

[Dwight Walker]

Useful for building simple cheap robots using Arduino chip rather than LEGO MINDSTORMS kit.