Book Review

Abstract

Hard Cover. This is a very interesting, well produced and copiously illustrated book which will be of interest to many people involved with the design development and applications in the new and potentially very wide and important field of service robots.In 1997 The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) defined a service robot as "One that operates partially or fully autonomously to perform services useful to the well being % of humans and equipment. They are mobile or manipulative or a combination of both". Service robots can be considered as a halfway step between industrial robots and personal robots. Service robots may well be in the mainstream of information and communication products in the first half of the 21st century.The book gives detailed accurate and illustrated descriptions of the technologies, but it is not mathematical. However the descriptions of the applications are sufficiently detailed to stimulate workers to investigate this new area of robotic applications.The book starts with a chapter on "From idea to product" which gives a good overview of the general techniques for the development of a product from the idea, through product definition and product concept to the production and test of a prototype. The next chapter deals with the basic functions of a service robot, including, orientation in motion, environment perception and modelling, robot positioning, path planning and robot guidance and collision protection. This is then followed by 17 chapters on different applications, from refuelling, through hotels and cooking and medicine to space.The last chapter is about the future applications of service robots. Due to the breakneck speed of development in the area of service robots and the inevitable loss of up-to-dateness of a list of references, readers are referred to a WWW page which will keep pace with the latest service robot developments.Altogether this is a most interesting and desirable book for engineers and for people in all fields which will be touched by this expanding technology. B. John DaviesEditor