Top Robotics books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Robotics books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Robotics

Understanding the concepts of Robotics starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

Robot Futures

In Robot Futures, the roboticist Illah Reza Nourbakhsh considers how we will share our world with these creatures, and how our society could change as it incorporates a race of stronger, smarter beings.

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Probabilistic Robotics

Probabilistic robotics is a new and growing area in robotics, concerned with perception and control in the face of uncertainty. Building on the field of mathematical statistics, probabilistic robotics endows robots with a new level of robustness in real-world situations.

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Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control (3rd Edition)

Blending traditional mechanical engineering material with computer science and control theoretical concepts, the text covers a range of topics, including rigid-body transformations, forward and inverse positional kinematics, velocities and Jacobians of linkages, dynamics, linear and non-linear control, force control methodologies, mechanical design aspects, and robotic programming.

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Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control

This introduction to robotics offers a distinct and unified perspective of the mechanics, planning and control of robots. Ideal for self-learning, or for courses, as it assumes only freshman-level physics, ordinary differential equations, linear algebra and a little bit of computing background. Modern Robotics presents the state-of-the-art, screw-theoretic techniques capturing the most salient…

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Awesome Robotics Projects for Kids: 20 Original STEAM Robots and Circuits to Design and Build (Awesome STEAM Activities for Kids)

Get ready to build all kinds of incredible robots―right in your own home! Designed for young robot builders, these do-it-yourself robotics for kids projects will teach you about science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) as you assemble an amazing collection of real working robots!
From scribblebots to two-legged walkers, this book walks you through robotics for kids, one beaut…

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A Mathematical Introduction to Robotic Manipulation

A Mathematical Introduction to Robotic Manipulation presents a mathematical formulation of the kinematics, dynamics, and control of robot manipulators. It uses an elegant set of mathematical tools that emphasizes the geometry of robot motion and allows a large class of robotic manipulation problems to be analyzed within a unified framework.

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Additional Robotics Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Robotics, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

Learning ROS for Robotics Programming

This updated edition will help you to work with ROS Hydro and teach you how to create, visualize, and process point cloud information from different sensors. This is a hands-on guide to the fascinating world of robotics which will help you get to grips with controlling and planning the motion of robotic arms with multiple joints using MoveIt.

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Springer Handbook of Robotics

Unlike other handbooks that focus on industrial applications, the Springer Handbook of Robotics incorporates these new developments. Just like all Springer Handbooks, it is utterly comprehensive, edited by internationally renowned experts, and replete with contributions from leading researchers from around the world.

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Robotics: Modelling, Planning and Control

Robotics provides the basic know-how on the foundations of robotics: modelling, planning and control. The text develops around a core of consistent and rigorous formalism with fundamental and technological material giving rise naturally and with gradually increasing difficulty to more advanced considerations.

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Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation

Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation addresses one form of robotic manipulation, moving objects, and the various processes involved—grasping, carrying, pushing, dropping, throwing, and so on. Unlike most books on the subject, it focuses on manipulation rather than manipulators.

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Running with Robots: The American High School's Third Century

Toppo and Tracy intersperse these reports from the present with bulletins from the future, telling the story of a high school principal who, Rip Van Winkle–style, sleeps for twenty years and, upon awakening in 2040, can hardly believe his eyes: the principal’s amazingly efficient assistant is a robot, calculation is outsourced to computers, and students, grouped by competence and not grade lev…

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Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology—and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who’s helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

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I’m a 3x startup founder (2x venture-backed) with deep experience building companies from research to market. My first startup spun out of my PhD in robotics and machine learning, giving me first-hand insight into turning cutting-edge research into real products and businesses. Moving from Australia to the US to found …

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I'm a technology executive with 18+ years of building teams to launch next-gen products in cutting edge industries - Custom AI Silicon, Datacenter Clusters, Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics & Consumer Electronics. I've worked globally, directly managed global teams, and empowered teams to launch breakthrough products. I have successfully up-skilled and enriched …

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