by TAB, How to Build Your Own Self-Programming Robot, by David L.
Heiserman, was the final book in this
series. Heiserman’s newest robot
centered on the Intel 8085 microprocessor and featured three levels of
robots called ‘Rodney’ Alpha, Beta,
and Gamma, and featured wire-wrapped circuit boards. (Remember
those?) The 8085 was used in quite a
few experimental robots in the early
‘80s and even a few kits and ready-builts. As with his earlier Buster
monikers, these ‘levels’ were never
adopted by anyone, but the book was
a great reference for advanced robotics
construction of the day. I’ve seen
these books on sale at used book
stores and I highly recommend that
you latch on to one or all of them as
references, or just interesting reading.
One book that I was particularly
fond of was Android Design, by
Martin Bradley Weinstein, published
by Hayden in 1981. It had so much
unique information beyond just the
typical robot built on a car or toy,
such as a TV camera built from a
dynamic RAM chip and a tri-wheel
robot design based on the Land
Master from the film ‘Damnation
Alley.’ There was even a design of a
robot finger made from a bicycle
chain. I loaned this book to a friend
years ago and he obviously liked
it better than I did and knew that
I’d forget who I had loaned it to.
Oh well. Two other classic robot
experimenter’s books of the early ‘80s
were published by Howard Sams
Company and written by Mark J.
Robillard. Remember the Sams Photo
Facts that you just had to get when
you bought something electronic so
you could later troubleshoot it?
Microprocessor Based Robotics
written in 1983 was also a goldmine
of great information on everything
from Intel’s 8748 microprocessor (it
had an EPROM on board the chip)
(Figure 3) to Polaroid’s electrostatic
sonar system to voice recognition.
Video systems, hacking the Big Trak,
arms, and other mechanisms were
also covered. His next book in 1984,
Advanced Robot Systems, not only
covered the Heath Hero 1 robot,
but rover robotics and manipulator
systems. I recommend that you locate
and buy both of these for information
that is quite useful even today.
Mobile Robots —
Inspiration to
Implementation
Taking a leap forward to newer
titles, Mobile Robots — Inspiration to
Implementation by Joseph Jones and
Anita Flynn published in 1993, is
another must for your bookshelf.
Though there was a lawsuit on just
who were the actual authors for the
second edition, either of the editions
are indispensible for any serious
robotics experimenter. Not surprising
to any of us, the authors and the
robots they describe all came from
MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab under
the auspices of Rodney Brooks. This is
one book that allows the reader to
start with a basic robot design, such
as the TuteBot (for tutorial robot) and
work up to a more sophisticated robot
such as the Rug Warrior. The TuteBot
was based on the LEGO block
system with the intelligence built with
analog parts available at your local
RadioShack. The latter design is more
heavily dependent on software design
and uses more sensors and actuators
to exhibit many more behaviors.
The two versions of the Rug
Warrior use the ever-popular Motorola
68HC11 microcontroller. The robot
was constructed with a clear acrylic
case and the book clearly references
all of the parts used. So many were
built using this book as a reference
that a true class of robot was born —
the Rug Warrior. As the name implies,
its area of operation was on the floor,
and the many available sensors gave
the many versions quite a sophisticated
capability. The schematics are
clear, the software programs in
the appendix run well with little
debugging, and this book has been
the key text for many high school and
college robotics courses.
Sensors for Mobile
Robots
A robot can contain the most
FIGURE 3. Intel C8748.
powerful microprocessor, a terabyte
of RAM, and hard drive capacity, plus
millions of lines of great code, but, if
it has no sensors to tell it what is
happening on the outside world, well,
it’s just a computer. Bart Everett’s
1995 book of over 500 pages,
Sensors for Mobile Robots is a ‘must
have’ book for any serious robot
experimenter. Having built some quite
sophisticated robots as a kid in high
school, he ended up in some of the
best places for anyone who loves to
build robots: several of the US Navy’s
best robotics labs. Those of us who
started in robotics many years ago
may have built one or two crude
creations as a kid, but Bart started
with a human-sized creation, then
delved into crawling robots, including
a hydraulic-controlled robot arm on
a mobile base. After his Naval
Postgraduate School, an admiral
recognized Bart’s talent and created a
FIGURE 4. Robart I. Photo courtesy
of the Space and Naval Warfare
Systems Center, San Diego.
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