This book introduces concepts in mobile, autonomous robotics to 3rd-4th year students in Computer Science or a related discipline. The book covers principles of robot motion, forward and inverse kinematics of robotic arms and simple wheeled platforms, perception, error propagation, localization and simultaneous localization and mapping. The cover picture shows a wind-up toy that is smart enough to not fall off a table just using intelligent mechanism design and illustrate the importance of the mechanism in designing intelligent, autonomous systems. This book is open source, open to contributions, and released under a creative common license.

This book is intended to be an accessible introduction to key algorithmic concepts in autonomousrobotics targeted toward undergraduate computer science students. It is not intended to be an exhaustive reference or to provide rigorous mathematical foundations, derivations or proofs. The focus is on clear explanations with extensive examples and visualizations.This book uses a Python-based pseudocode that is generally very close to executable Python. The author has attempted to steer clear of any idiomatic Python constructs so that the algorithm listings should be easy to follow even for those without a background in the Python language.This book is a work in progress! It covers several of the central algorithmic ideas in autonomousrobotics, but there are still significant missing pieces. In particular, there is currently no coverage ofparticle filters, mapping algorithms, or simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The author welcomes contributions.Table of Contents:Chapter 1: Controlling Physical SystemsChapter 2: Coordinate FramesChapter 3: Path PlanningChapter 4: Probabilistic LocalizationBibliographyIndex