Our textbook, The Robotics Book, is a freely accessible textbook written to advance education in the fundamental concepts of robotics engineering. The text reviews methods of sensing, control, decision-making, and acutation in robotic systems. It also explores new horizons in the field of robotics, and we hope it inspires in the reader a deep love and appreciation for the big, beautiful, crazy world of robotics!
The First Edition of The Robotics Book will be published on Monday, January 5, 2026. Later editions are planned and will be published irregularly as they are completed.
The text will be available digitally on this website. In pursuit of The Robotics Book's mission to make high-quality robotics education more accessible to everybody, and to spread far and wide a passion for robotics, the digital version of The Robotics Book will be available publicly, at no cost in perpetuity. No reader will be asked to create an account or pay for access to the book.
For those interested, The Robotics Book will also be available in paperback. This edition will be for purchase, due to the cost of paper, ink, and binding. However, the cost of the paperback edition will be only the cost of materials, printing, binding, and shipping, as necessary.
All content in The Robotics Book, unless otherwise specified, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial license. In summary, any reader may use this text for any non-commercial purpose if he or she provides appropriate attribution. Furthermore, any reader may, if he or she desires, create a derivative work of this text, under the condition that the derivative work is licensed under the same license as this text.
In light of the changing social and technological landscape associated with the advancements and widespread usage of generative AI technologies, a statement on the use of generative AI in preparation of this text is printed on the dedication page of the text, inside the front cover. We reproduce this statement here.
We respect the efforts of the many inspired engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists who are currently advancing the state of the art in generative models for language and vision. At the same time, we hold ourselves to the highest standard of quality and accountability in the production of educational materials. Thus, it is both our decision and our guarantee that generative models are not used for creating, revising, copyediting, or proofreading any content, written or otherwise, in this text.