To tell the story of The Robotics Book is to tell of a long and winding journey. There is not nearly enough space within these margins to tell the story in its entirety, but we can tell its abridged version here.
In 2001, the Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory (MASLAB) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was first offered as a for-credit course. Organized and taught entirely by undergraduates, the course challenged its students to design, build, and test an autonomous robot in only four weeks. Offered every January, this course thrived in the do-it-yourself and nerdy culture of MIT, and it quickly became a beloved tradition at the Institute.
The primary focus of MASLAB has always been, and will always be, practically minded; students work 30 to 40 hours weekly in a completely hands-on lab environment, with course staff always available to provide mentorship, encouragement, and guidance. However, the field of robotics is an almost unfathomably big world, and to help students navigate it, the course staff began preparing lectures and educational examples to teach students the foundational principles of the field.
This text was first inspired by the hard-working students and staff of the MASLAB program, and their passion for robotics. It is not an official textbook of the MASLAB program, nor is the text endorsed by MIT. Rather, it is a codification of years of informal lectures offered by the passionate, devoted course staff since 2001. Furthermore, the text is dedicated to the current and future students of MASLAB as a guide for their robotics journey.
The Institute has a long-standing tradition of making educational materials openly available to the world, for the advancement of accessible education. Though this text is not endorsed by MIT, The Robotics Book is made available for anybody to read at no cost, in keeping with this tradition and as a tribute to the Institute which cultivated the MASLAB program and inspired this text.