Artificial Intelligence for Robotics: Build Smart AI-Powered Robots to Automate Human Tasks | Perfect for Home Automation, Industrial Robotics & AI Research

This book focuses on the design and construction of a robot called Tinman. The robot’s main functions are to pick up toys in a room and place them in a box, and also to communicate, in a rudimentary way, with humans. The book covers everything from assembling the robot from its basic parts to programming it to perform various tasks. It covers the theory in a fairly non-rigorous and descriptive way, but that’s just fine as it is not meant to be a graduate level text.Having said that, the book covers a remarkable range of technologies including object recognition, image classification, CNNs, reinforcement learning, genetic algorithms, language processing, planning, navigation, speech, Q&A, joke telling, and artificial personality. It concludes with a recap, a useful discussion on a career in robotics and some salient comments regarding AI safety. The relevant code is included within chapters and answers to the questions are given at the end of the book. Videos to accompany the chapters and a GitHub site are a welcome bonus and icing on the cake.The software frameworks covered include ROS, Ubuntu, Python, Tensorflow, Keras, OpenCV, Mycroft and Scikit-learn. Hardware covered includes the Raspberry Pi 3, robotic arm, USB camera, microphone, motor, servos, an Arduino microcontroller, battery, sensors, along with the Google AIY Voice kit. The author has many years of experience in designing industry robots and has spent a life working at the leading edge of artificial intelligence, unmanned vehicles, and robotics. Accordingly, he is well-placed to write a practical and hands-on book such as this. My only criticisms are that the book lacks a little rigor in places, and it contains the odd distracting typo.In summary, if you are looking for a more theoretical book on robotics, you will need to look elsewhere. However, if you are looking for a down-to-earth, practical book on designing and building robotics you have come to the right place, and for that I give it four and a half rounded up to a well-earned five stars. I personally learned a lot from this book and came away feeling more confident that I had gained a lot of good practical knowledge on AI and robotics.