Keywords
Citation
Rigelsford, J. (2004), "Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots", Industrial Robot, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 534-535. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2004.31.6.534.3
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
An “Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots” provides an overview of the mechanisms that enable mobile robots to move through a real world environment to perform their tasks. It covers all aspects of mobile robotics including hardware design, wheel design, kinematics analysis, sensors and perception, localization, mapping, and robot control architectures.
The book comprises six chapters that progressively address the key issues relating to robot mobility. The first chapter provides an introduction, while legged and wheeled mobile robots are discussed in chapter 2, Locomotion. Mobile Robot Kinematics are addressed in chapter 3 and cover kinematic models and constraints, mobile robot manoeuvrability, mobile robot workspace, beyond basic kinematics, and motion control.
Chapter 4 provides in‐depth coverage of Perception, and presents suitable sensors for mobile robotic applications, methods for representing uncertainty, and techniques for feature extraction. The challenge of localization: noise and aliasing, location‐based navigation vs programmed solutions, belief representation, map representation, probabilistic map‐based localization, autonomous map building, and other examples of localization systems, are discussed in chapter 5, Mobile Robot Localization. The final chapter of the book addresses Planning and Navigation and presents methods for planning and reacting to navigation problems, and navigation architecture.
Overall, an “Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robotics” is an excellent textbook, which is suitable for students and practicing engineers. The book is accompanied by a Web site that provides slides and exercises.