eBooks: Robotics

This book will help you to enjoy building robots and understand how exciting robotics can be in terms of design, coding, and the expression of ideas. The book begins by taking you through a new realm of playful learning experiences designed for inventors and creators of any age. In each chapter, you'll find out how to build a creative robot, learn to bring the robot to life through code, and finally work with exercises to test what you've learned and remix the robot to suit your own unique style. Throughout the chapters, you'll build exciting new smart robots such as a handheld game, a robotic arm with a joystick, a guitar, a flying bird, a sumobot, a dragster, and a Simon Says game.By the end of this LEGO book, you'll have gained the knowledge and skills you need to build any robot that you can imagine. What you will learn Discover how the LEGO SPIKE Prime kit works, and explore its parts and the elements inside them Build and design robots that go beyond basic robotic designs Create interactive robots with the help of sensors Explore real-world robots and learn how to build them by yourself Find out challenging ways to remix build ideas with your own imagination and skills Develop coding skills using the Scratch programming interface Who this book is for This book is for robot enthusiasts, LEGO lovers, hobbyists, educators, students, and anyone looking to learn about the new LEGO SPIKE Prime kit. The book is designed to go beyond the basic builds to intermediate and advanced builds, while also helping you to learn how to add your own personal touch to the builds and code. To make the most of this book, you'll need a basic understanding of build techniques, coding in block-based software environments, and weaving them together to create unique robot builds. ]]>

This book critically examines the sweeping impacts of robotization and the use of artificial intelligence on employment, per capita income, quality of life, poverty, and inequality in developing and developed economies. It analyzes the direct and indirect effects they have had and are projected to have on the labour markets and production processes in the manufacturing, healthcare and agricultural industries among others. The author explores comparisons of human labour with robotic labour emphasizing the changes that new technologies will bring to traditionally labour-intensive industries. Offering various insights into the effectiveness, benefits and negative implications of robotization on the economy, the book provides a comprehensive picture for policymakers to implement changes that embrace new technologies while meeting employment needs and development goals. Topical and lucid, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of science and technology studies, digital humanities, economics, labour studies, public policy, development studies, political studies and sociology as well as policymakers and others who are interested in these areas.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most rapidly developing technology in the current Digital Age, but it is also the least defined, understood and adequately explained technological advance. This book brings together a group of leading experts who assess different aspects of AI from different disciplinary perspectives. The book argues that robots are not living systems but the creations of humans who must ultimately be accountable for the actions of the robots that they have invented. Robots do not have ownership entitlement. The book uses Intellectual Property Rights cases, evidence from roboticists, cybersecurity experts, Patent Court judges, technology officers, climate change scientists, economists, physicists and those from the legal profession to demonstrate that while AI can have very beneficial uses for many aspects of human economy and society, robots are not living systems autonomous from human decision making. This book will be useful to those in banking and insurance, cybersecurity, lawyers, judges, technology officers, economists, scientist inventors, computer scientists, large and small companies and postgraduate students.

Artificial intelligence is on the point of taking humankind into a new age. The turning point will come when AI has advanced so far that it matches human intelligence in every way. Human intelligence, whilst slower in some respects, is still more flexible than AI. But, once AI has caught up, it will take no time at all before going on to surpass humans by a huge distance. That scary prospect is termed artificial superintelligence (ASI). Rupert Robson argues that we are now just two conceptual hurdles away from developing ASI. The first of the two hurdles is to embed consciousness in AI, thereby giving us the sentient robot. This will enable ASI to see the world through our eyes. The second of the two hurdles is about the developmental step needed in AI design so as to achieve human-level flexibility in thought. A new world is about to open up before us. We need to understand it and prepare for it.

Soft robotics is a subfield of robotics that encompasses the design and fabrication of robots with soft and compliant materials. Soft robots represent components like human prosthetics or biomimicking systems. Soft robotics relies on technically astute designs based on the correct choice of materials to enable a level of dexterity not possible with rigid components alone. The basic prime movers (actuators) and perception (sensors) require control systems capable of accommodating imprecise feedback data and often unpredictable reaction times. Mobility in such robots is more akin to entomological or marine systems than conventional guided vehicles. This reference is a guide to materials and systems used in soft robotics. If features 6 chapters contributed by robotics experts that review fundamental and applied topics that are important for understanding the requirements of soft robotics design projects and the physics of the polymers involved. Chapters are organized for easy reading and include references. The topics include: - Aspects of materials processing and engineering for the development of soft robotic devices - A review on biological gripping principles and their application to robotics - Information about self-sensing electroadhesive polymer grippers with magnetically controllable surface geometry - Theoretical and experimental investigations of magnetic hybrid materials - Modeling and dynamic analysis of a novel rotary soft robotic arm by transfer matrix method - Design and control of a portable continuum robot for pipe inspection assisted by a rigid manipulator This book is a suitable reference for scholars and engineers who are seeking knowledge about materials and design principles in soft robotics with its practical applications.