Are you’re looking for a master list of the best robotics books that every future robot programmer should read in their lifetime? This is a great place to start. Unfortunately, I found just one robotics related book that was interesting. But don’t worry, I have something extra for you :)
The Extended Arm of Man: A History of Industrial Robot
This is is a beautifully illustrated album comprising 160 pages. This is a perfect book to everyone who is interested in robotics history or generally the history of inventions. It is published by a leading robotics company, so the development of the robots is described from their point of view. ABB has a great impact on the robotics sector. They invented a modern industrial robot with all electric drives and microprocessor for accurate control. Fortunately, this is not a history note of one company. In the book you will also find information about the beginning of robotics and first companies on the market like Unimate, Comau, Fanuc Kuka, Staubli. Definitely worth of reading even for persons who are not familiar with industrial robotics concepts. Book looks beautiful and even is almost 20 years old is still worth buying.
Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle
Most robots programmers working in the automotive industry, so I would like to recommend a book about the beginning of the biggest car companies. Tittle tells that this is a history of one car, but remember that Beetle was the first car made by Volkswagen. So the history of the Beetle is also a history of the whole company. I don’t believe that any car will ever match the life story of this model. Volkswagen built over 22 million of original Beetles, keeping the same Porsche designed body over its an entire 65-year run. This is the car that launched Volkswagen and helped propel it to become the 1st largest automotive company in the world.
Industrial robots and cobots: everything you need to know about future coworker
So we have two books which describe „ancient” times: the beginning of the robotics and early days of the modern automotive company. You enjoyed them and you want to read more about modern robotics? I was in this position a few years ago. I wanted to find a modern robotics book for myself, but everything that I found was heavily outdated (robot ideas from ’80 which disappeared from the market a long time ago were described as promising). There was also a typical robotics textbook with no images, almost no text and a lot of mathematical formulas. So that’s why I decided to write my book which describes modern robotics is easy to read and filled with practical information. I hope that this one helps you with the beginning of the journey into the robotics world.
Remember that on Amazon you could read first two non-technical chapters for free.
Have you recently read something interesting and you can recommend it? Feel free to write a comment and I’ll be happy to check it out. RAPID reference manual does not count ;-)