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Dear friends,
during the last months I mentioned in a few occasions (in lugnet.robotics)
that my brother Giulio and I were writing a book. Now the time has come to
officially present it.
The title of the book is Building Robots with Lego Mindstorms, and as the
title promises it deals much more with building techniques rather than with
programming. We talked about programming too, because as you know it's often
impossible to separate the topics when dealing with robotics, but we
provided just a few examples and in many occasions described only some
possible algorithms instead of supplying full code. We think that there are
many good books that already cover the topic very well.
The book is organised into three sections: Tools, Projects, Contests, plus a
few appendixes. The Tools section describes the main building techniques
starting from the very basics, and explains with simple words all the
physical principles required to manage gears, levers, pneumatics, motors
etc. It talks about: Lego geometry, gears, motors, sensors, modular
architecture, typical mobile configurations, pneumatics. It also includes
tips about structured programming, simple mathematical tools, techniques to
find and grab objects, and introduces to navigation methods.
The Projects section describes about thirty complete robots, which range
from very simple platforms that change direction after collisions, to some
classic projects like line-following, to much more sophisticated robots
designed to simulate flight or to play chess. In the middle there are many
different robots, aimed at walking, skiing, playing drum or piano, emulating
renowned droids or animals, solving mazes, drawing and writing, watering
plants and more. We want to highlight that we did NOT provide step-by-step
instructions to replicate our robots. We described them in detail, showing
also a lot of pictures from any view, but we leave a lot of work to the
reader, who has to find out its own implementation solutions. The concept
behind the book is that we want to spur the reader's curiosity and to
provide starting points to his own creativity.
The last section talks about Contests. We describe some typical challenges,
but more important we explain how attending a contest entails a sort of
"paradigm shift": from building a robot that "works" to building a robot
"optimised" for a given task.
The book has about 650 pages, contains more than 500 b&w photos and a 16
pages color insert. It's published by Syngress Publishing. The official book
page is here:
http://www.syngress.com/catalog/sg_main.cfm?pid=1741
There are many LUGNET friends who played a role in getting this book done.
Actually, this book would have not been written without the contributions of
the entire LUGNET Robotics community. Its members are incredibly creative,
competent, helpful, and friendly, and they are always willing to share ideas
and solutions with other people. We have attempted to give proper credit to
all the people whose ideas we mentioned in the book, and we apologize in
advance for those people who have been unintentionally left out.
Special thanks go to:
- Brian Bagnall for suggesting our names to Syngress Publishing when he
heard they were looking for an author to write a book focused on ideas and
techniques for building MINDSTORMS robots.
- Jonathan Knudsen, who encouraged us in embarking upon the adventure of
writing a book, and who helped us in understanding the world of technical
publishing.
- Guido Truffelli, who patiently read every page of the manuscript. His
comments and suggestions were very valuable in making the book more complete
and more useful.
- Ralph Hempel, who accepted the offer to perform the technical edit of the
book. Ralph's contributions to Mindstorms robotics are impressive, and range
from mechanical solutions to extreme programming. His involvement proved to
be even more significant that we had even imagined.
We'll be glad to reply to any question about the book.
Best regards
Mario Ferrari
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Message has 6 Replies:
 | | Re: Building Robots with Lego Mindstorms (long)
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| Greetings, Mario! Quick question: the Syngress site lists your book as 656 pages, hardcover with downloadable version -- Amazon lists it as 448 pages, paperback and mentions no downloadable version. The coverart is different for both, so can we (...) (23 years ago, 8-Nov-01, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Building Robots with Lego Mindstorms (long)
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| Hello Mario, congratulations for a major achievement and contribution to the community. If the book is only half as good as you announcement makes mne think it is, it is going to be great! I will be sure to grab a copy of it ... Greetings Horst (23 years ago, 9-Nov-01, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Building Robots with Lego Mindstorms (long)
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| Be aware that if you attempt to buy this from the Syngress web site and you are outside of the US it will take 1-2 days to authorise before you can download! This is only mentioned on the web site AFTER they have taken your credit card details and (...) (23 years ago, 9-Nov-01, to lugnet.robotics)
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