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Design and Control of Intelligent Robotic Systems (Liu, D. EDs, et al) [On
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Article  in  IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine · December 2012

DOI: 10.1109/MRA.2012.2221251

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 ON THE SHELF
Five Hundred and Seven
Mechanical Movements
By Henry T. Brown
F
ive Hundred and Seven Mechanical
Movements is a classic little jewel
of moving mechanisms, a valuable
resource for anyone who is
building robots. When first published in
1868, this book offered the pre-Internet
world a collection of the greatest moving
devices of the time, gathered together in
one small readable volume. Reissued in
1995, this book is still being used and
enjoyed. Although there is a great deal of
innovation happening now in software,
every robot that has to act in the world
requires mechanisms, and this book
provides them.
You will find reading this book
enjoyable, if just for its historical value
alone. In fact, you don’t have to have a
technical background to understand
the descriptions, although it will
remind those with engineering back-
grounds of school-days learning and
provide innovative variations that
might not have been thought of. On
the historical side, the book includes
the latest discoveries of the time, such
as C.R. Otis’s safety stop for the eleva-
tor and Pickering’s governor for a
steam engine.
However, the book also has a great
deal of useful information for the
robotics field. It includes 507 clearly
labeled and numbered pictures that
correspond to the numbered descrip-
tions of many of the important mech-
anisms used in robot construction.
Each mechanism is clearly drawn,
illustrating how the parts fit together.
Then, the picture’s description
explains how the mechanism works
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2012.2221242
Date of publication: 6 December 2012
88 • IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
and also tells what kind of motion is
produced. This method of organizing
lends itself well to be used as a quick
reference or inspiration during the
design process.
Some examples of the many types of
mechanisms you will find are brakes,
blowers, cams, compasses, couplings,
cranks, differential movements, ejec-
tors, engines, escapements, gauges,
gearing, governors, gyroscopes, various
types of hammers, hydraulics, hooks,
ladders, levels, pantographs, pendu-
lums, pinions, presses, pulleys, pumps,
rack and pinions, ratchets, regulators,
rollers, screws, shears, stops, toggles,
wheels, windlasses, and wipers—to
name just a few!
As some examples of the level of
detail included, there are 23 different
kinds of pulleys, each providing a
unique solution to a particular kind
of pulley movement you might need.
The gear section is quite detailed,
with many varieties for circular
motion, such as transmission of cir-
cular motion, reciprocating motion,
planetary motion, clutch boxes, and
transmitting different speeds. Each
of the categories listed above
includes multiple variations, so that
you can find a very specific design.
The book gives a few simple
numerical calculation methods at
times, but math is not emphasized.
The real value of this book is in see-
ing the clear drawings and reading
the precise explanations of exactly
how motion is expressed by each
type of mechanism. You will find
solutions to meet the many kinds of
movement situations you need for
your robot thanks to all of the fine-
grained variations this book includes.
And in the process of enjoying a
journey through history, you just
might find the creative solution you
are looking for. We highly recom-
• DECEMBER 2012
mend this practical and fun little
book!
—Reviewed by C. Alexander
Simpkins, Ph.D., and Annellen M.
Simpkins, Ph.D., San Diego, California
Design and Control
of Intelligent Robotic Systems
Edited by Dikai Liu, Lingfeng Wang,
and Kay Chen Tan
D
esign and Control of Intelligent
Robotic Systems is an edited
collection of advanced
research in robotics, part of
the series Studies in Computational
Intelligence. Robotics is a young field.
The advent of inexpensive powerful
computation, sensors, actuators, and
more powerful CAD/analysis packages
is opening doors that were previously
far beyond reach. More effective
theories and strategies are being rapidly
developed, as increasingly challenging
and complex problems are identified
and addressed. This book series is an
attempt to gather together and present
the newest work; this volume
emphasizes the design and control
of robots.
The book is composed of 21 chap-
ters, with topics ranging from an over-
view of computational intelligence,
various swarm optimizations for
groups of robots, behavioral learning
methods, path planning inspired by
emotional intelligence, heterogeneous
systems, and acquisition of neural
structure, to the design and control of a
rehabilitation robot (to list a few of the
many topics). The book is well written,
clearly laid out, and informative.
Each chapter is quite different
and self contained, and so it is not
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2012.2221251
Date of publication: 6 December 2012
1070-9932/12/$31.00©2012IEEE
 possible to cover all the topics in this
review. However, I will highlight a few
interesting points. The first is that a
number of techniques are presented
that address the issue of increasing
complexity in robotic systems—cur-
rently a significant problem. Some of
these include particle swarm optimi-
zation, (EV) evolutionary, neural,
fuzzy, MRAC (model reference adap-
tive control), and hierarchical
approaches. In addition, not only does
the book cover the design of fixed
control algorithms, but it also includes
how to adapt the algorithm for
unstructured or uncertain environ-
ments and changing task parameters
(hence, “intelligent” in the book title).
This can be achieved by incorporating
learning methods (several of the above
methods incorporate some adaptation
or learning components) that alter
the parameters of the controller in
some useful way (i.e., optimizing by
minimizing cost, by altering weights
to improve some performance criteri-
on, or by changing the very structure
of the system).
Though the book is a collection,
not a textbook, the commonalities
of the theme make it a useful read
for robotics researchers, graduate
students, or individuals interested
in familiarizing themselves with the
latest in a range of robotics research
topics, centered around the con-
cepts of design and control. More
focus is given to the control and
algorithmic side than to the design
of physical systems, but most of the
chapters are applied to physical sys-
tems in well-described experiments.
One especially useful component
for those interested in going beyond
the book is the reference section at
the end of each chapter. By the
end of the book, the reader will defi-
nitely be better informed about the
newest research in intelligent robot-
ics, methods, and the many nuances
of implementation. Since robotics
typically involves not just purely the-
oretical exercises, this difficult-to-
strike balance between theory and
implementation is significant. I rec-
ommend this book to anyone
interested in expanding his or her
repertoire of techniques. Those who
are already familiar with the tech-
niques in this book will not only
deepen their understanding of the
methods themselves, but also how to
address the nontrivial challenges of
implementation.
—Reviewed by C. Alex Simpkins,
Jr., Ph.D., Seattle, Washington


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DECEMBER 2012 • IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE • 89

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