Robot sensors and transducers

The increasing sophistication of robots depends largely on giving them sense. That is, the ability to detect and respond to changes in both their external and internal environment. There are many devices currently available, and more under development, which can serve this purpose. It is the aim of this book to show the engineer how best to make use of sensor technology in robotic engineering. The reader is first taken through the appropriate range of transducers for measuring position, light, force and velocity with a discussion of interfacing for each. Sensors based on these devices are taken up in the next section with a central chapter on vision sensing and another on tactile sensors. This leads on to the third section in which image processing is introduced, with discussions of image manipulation and image analysis. Clear, practical and well illustrated, this text allows the reader to grasp the essential instrumentation and electronics required of the modern manufacturing engineer. This book should be of interest to second and third year engineering students and manufacturing engineers.