Bücher von John Billingsley

From grading and preparing harvested vegetables to the tactile probing of a patient's innermost recesses, mechatronics has become part of our way of life. The addition of senses and computing intelligence to blend with mechanical actuation gives rise to a breed of new machines with all the best attributes of a robot. Here we find educational robots competing under water and dancing on land. Surgical robots drill precision holes in the skull while others direct radiation treatment or extract blood from an umbilical cord. Machine vision manages beer kegs and automated paint spraying, while controlling feral animals and the watering of cotton crops. Although there is no shortage of theoretical and technical detail in these chapters, they have the common theme that they describe work that has been applied in practice. They are vital reading both for students of mechatronics and for engineers harnessing its power to create new products.

The inertia tensor is presented as a key to understanding motion ranging from boomerangs to gyroscopes. Chains of transformations unravel the motion of a robot arm.To help the reader visualise motion, ranging from unbalanced rotors to vibrating systems with multiple modes and damping, there are abundant simulation examples on a linked website.