I have developed "tennis elbow" from lugging this book around the past four weeks, but it is worth the pain, the effort, and the aspirin. It is also worth the (relatively speaking) bargain price. Including appendixes, this book contains 894 pages of text. The entire panorama of the neural sciences is surveyed and examined, and it is comprehensive in its scope, from genomes to social behaviors. The editors explicitly state that the book is designed as "an introductory text for students of biology, behavior, and medicine," but it is hard to imagine any audience, interested in any fragment of neuroscience at any level of sophistication, that would not enjoy this book. The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or

Principles of Neural Science

From the Publisher: 
The accessible presentation of this book gives both a general view of the entire computer vision enterprise and also offers sufficient detail to be able to build useful applications. Users learn techniques that have proven to be useful by first-hand experience and a wide range of mathematical methods. A CD-ROM with every copy of the text contains source code for programming practice, color images, and illustrative movies. Comprehensive and up-to-date, this book includes essential topics that either reflect practical significance or are of theoretical importance. Topics are discussed in substantial and increasing depth. Application surveys describe numerous important application areas such as image based rendering and digital libraries. Many important algorithms broken down and illustrated in pseudo code. Appropriate for use by engineers as a comprehensive reference to the computer vision enterprise.

Computer vision : a modern approach = 计算机视觉 : 一种现代的方法

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~illah/PAPERS/socialroboticssurvey.pdf

A survey of socially interactive robots

The theory of affordances

From the Publisher:
Cynthia Breazeal here presents her vision of the sociable robot of the future, a synthetic creature and not merely a sophisticated tool. A sociable robot will be able to understand us, to communicate and interact with us, to learn from us and grow with us. It will be socially intelligent in a humanlike way. Eventually sociable robots will assist us in our daily lives, as collaborators and companions. Because the most successful sociable robots will share our social characteristics, the effort to make sociable robots is also a means for exploring human social intelligence and even what it means to be human.
Breazeal defines the key components of social intelligence for these machines and offers a framework and set of design issues for their realization. Much of the book focuses on a nascent sociable robot she designed named Kismet. Breazeal offers a concrete implementation for Kismet, incorporating insights from the scientific study of animals and people, as well as from artistic disciplines such as classical animation. This blending of science, engineering, and art creates a lifelike quality that encourages people to treat Kismet as a social creature rather than just a machine. The book includes a CD-ROM that shows Kismet in action.

Designing Sociable Robots

The state of the art in and the future of robotics are discussed. The potential paths to the long-term vision of robots that work alongside people in homes and workplaces as useful, capable collaborators are discussed. Robot manipulation in human environments is expected to grow in the coming years as more researchers seek to create robots that actively help in the daily lives of people

/pdf/challenges-for-robot-manipulation-in-human-environments-366h40d452.pdf

Challenges for robot manipulation in human environments [Grand Challenges of Robotics]

For manipulation tasks, the transfer of objects between humans and robots is a fundamental way to coordinate activity and cooperatively perform useful work. Within this paper we demonstrate that robots and people can effectively and intuitively work together by directly handing objects to one another. First, we present experimental results that demonstrate that subjects without explicit instructions or robotics expertise can successfully hand objects to a robot and take objects from a robot in response to reaching gestures. Moreover, when handing an object to the robot, subjects control the object's position and orientation to match the configuration of the robot's hand, thereby simplifying robotic grasping and offering opportunities to simplify the manipulation task. Second, we present a robotic application that relies on this form of human-robot interaction. This application enables a humanoid robot to help a user place objects on a shelf, perform bimanual insertion tasks, and hold a box within which the user can place objects. By handing appropriate objects to the robot, the human directly and intuitively controls the robot. Through this interaction, the human and robot complement one another's abilities and work together to achieve results.

/pdf/human-robot-interaction-for-cooperative-manipulation-handing-4ne99horio.pdf

Human-Robot Interaction for Cooperative Manipulation: Handing Objects to One Another

Ballard (1991) described the implications of having a visual system that could actively position the camera coordinates in response to physical stimuli. In humanoid robotic systems, or in any animate vision system that interacts with people, social dynamics provide additional levels of constraint and additional opportunities for processing economy. In this paper, we describe an integrated visual-motor system that was implemented on a humanoid robot to negotiate the robot's physical constraints, the perceptual needs of the robot's behavioral and motivational systems, and the social implications of the motor acts.

/pdf/active-vision-for-sociable-robots-2tp08c4hyo.pdf

Active vision for sociable robots

The promise of oceanic discovery has long intrigued scientists and explorers, whether with the idea of studying underwater ecology and climate change or with the hope of uncovering natural resources and historic secrets buried deep in archaeological sites. This quest to explore the oceans requires skilled human access, yet much of the oceans are inaccessible to human divers; nearly ninetenths of the ocean floor is at 1 km or deeper [1]. Accessing these depths is imperative since factors such as pollution and deep-sea trawling threaten ecology and archaeological sites. While remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are inadequate for the task, a robotic avatar could go where humans cannot and still embody human intelligence and intentions through immersive interfaces.

/pdf/ocean-one-a-robotic-avatar-for-oceanic-discovery-2lwd2pqvku.pdf

Ocean One: A Robotic Avatar for Oceanic Discovery

Motivated by the requirements of mobile manipulation, a compliant underactuated hand, capable of locking individual joints, has been developed. Locking is accomplished with electrostatic brakes in the joints and significantly increases the maximum pullout forces for power grasps. In addition, by locking and unlocking joints, the hand can adopt configurations and grasp sequences that would otherwise require a fully actuated solution. Other features of the hand include an integrated sensing suite that uses a common transduction technology on flexible printed circuits for tactile and proprioceptive sensing. The hand is analyzed using a three-dimensional rigid body analysis package with efficient simulation of compliant mechanisms and contacts with friction. This package allows one to evaluate design tradeoffs among link lengths, required tendon tensions, spring stiffnesses and braking requirements to grasp and hold a wide range of objects. Results of grasping and pullout tests confirm the utility of the simulations.

Aaron Edsinger

Papers

Challenges for robot manipulation in human environments [Grand Challenges of Robotics]

Human-Robot Interaction for Cooperative Manipulation: Handing Objects to One Another

Active vision for sociable robots

Ocean One: A Robotic Avatar for Oceanic Discovery

Design and testing of a selectively compliant underactuated hand