Springer Handbook of Robotics
Springer Handbook of Robotics
Article Type: Book reviews From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 36, Issue 4
Edited by Bruno Siciliano and Oussama Kathib,Springer, Berlin,2008,422 pp.,www.springer.com/engineering/robotics/book/978-3-540-23957-4,ISBN: 978-3-540-23957-4,$199.99,
This book, which belongs to the series of the Springer Handbooks, represents a useful desk reference volume that gives a comprehensive overview of robotics. It is divided in seven main parts:
- 1.
robotics foundations (including kinematics, dynamics, control, programming);
- 2.
robot structures;
- 3.
sensing and perception;
- 4.
manipulation and interfaces;
- 5.
mobile and distributed robotics;
- 6.
field and service robotics (industrial, underwater, aerial robotics; space robots and systems; robotics for agriculture, forestry, mining, search and rescue, medical and rehabilitation applications; domestic and education robotics); and
- 7.
human-centered and life-like robotics (humanoids, human-robot interaction,social robots, biologically-inspired robots, neurorobotics).
These seven main parts are expanded in 64 chapters, written by the world’s leading robotics researchers.
The objective of synthesizing all the aspects of a wide-ranging and pervasive technologic area like robotics in a handbook is very challenging. To this aim,the quantity of provided information is remarkable: over 1,600 double-column pages with 953 figures and 84 tables, both in hard copy and soft copy (DVD-ROM).
The main merit of this book is that it considers exhaustively the developments and emerging trends in all the sectors of robotics, providing over 5,500 selected references. The quality and the scientific level are assured by the excellence of the editors (two main editors and seven part editors) and of the 167 contributors.
The structure and the distribution of the work are not convincing in some cases. For example, the 20 pages about all the different types of industrial robots and the 14 pages about the domestic cleaning robots are certainly unbalanced; the chapter about robot kinematics is too brief (about 20 pages),with some missing topics.
In conclusion, this robotics handbook is a very useful tool, especially for researchers who aim at having a complete overview of state-of-the-art and of the emerging trends and applications. With respect to the classic books about general robotics, this handbook is more application and research-oriented, and it is quite synthetic about the basis of robot mechanics (kinematics, dynamics);therefore it is not alternative but complementary to them.
Luca Bruzzone
DIMEC – University of Genova, Genova, Italy
