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This book summarizes recent advances in robotics using 3D printers and rapid prototyping as a concept development tool. The book is focused on industrial applications, educational aspects, rehabilitation, and other related topics. In particular, the book is intended to offer the reader a smooth yet deep introduction to the use of 3D printers and rapid prototyping techniques as a solution to robotics and mechatronics problems, highlighting successful case studies.

This book describes a novel system for the simultaneous visual and tactile rendering of product shapes which allows designers to simultaneously touch and see new product shapes during the conceptual phase of product development. This system offers important advantages, including potential cost and time savings, compared with the standard product design process in which digital 3D models and physical prototypes are often repeatedly modified until an optimal design is achieved. The system consists of a tactile display that is able to represent, within a real environment, the shape of a product. Designers can explore the rendered surface by touching curves lying on the product shape, selecting those curves that can be considered style features and evaluating their aesthetic quality. In order to physically represent these selected curves, a flexible surface is modeled by means of servo-actuated modules controlling a physical deforming strip. The tactile display is designed so as to be portable, low cost, modular, and high performing in terms of the types of shape that it can represent.

The term rapid prototyping (RP) refers to a generic group of emerging technologies that enable very quick fabrication of engineering components primarily targeted for prototyping applications. With RP, very complex three­ dimensional parts or prototypes can be fabricated without the need of costly tooling and machining. This inevitably leads to much shorter design cycle time and lower cost of building a prototype. Its manifold benefits include significant productivity gains, cost saving, and shortened development time to introduce concept models. As such, RP technologies have attracted tremendous R&D interests from both academia and industry in the past decade. Many different processes and materials have been commercialized and used in industry primarily for the fabrication of physical prototypes. More recent interests in RP technologies are towards functional applications of the fabricated parts, such as in rapid tooling applications and replacements of damaged components. Many processes and materials have been commercialized but are yet to be able to fulfill the aforementioned functional requirements because of limited mechanical strengths of the fabricated parts.

At first glance, a book on'Design by Composition for Rapid Prototyping'may seem out of place in a series on Robotics. However, this work has a couple of strong connections to the field of robotics and the robotics community, and I am delighted to introduce it to the series. The first connection is the motivation behind Binnard's work. Michael Binnard came to Stanford after having done his Masters thesis at the M.LT. Artificial Intelligence Lab, where he designed and built small walking robots, such as Boadicea (http://www.ai.mit.eduJprojects/boadicea/).At M.LT. he observed first-hand how difficult it is to align, connect and support standard actuators, sensors, and processors in small mobile robots. Figure lea) below shows how complicated it is just to connect a simple motor to one link of a robot leg using conventional methods. Surely there had to be a better way! Shape deposition manufacturing, an emerging rapid prototyping process, offered a possible solution. Actuators, sensors, processors and other components could be embedded directly into almost arbitrary three-dimensional shapes, without any of the fasteners and couplings that complicate the design in Figure lea). The process makes it possible to construct integrated robotic mechanisms, such as the example shown in Figure 1 (b) and the additional examples found in Chapters 7 and 8 of this monograph.

Rapid Prototyping of Digital Systems provides an exciting and challenging laboratory component for undergraduate digital logic and computer design courses. The more advanced topics and exercises also make this text useful for upper level courses in digital logic or programmable logic. Design engineers working in industry will want to consider this text for a rapid introduction to PPLD technology and logic synthesis using commercial CAD tools. Rapid Prototyping of Digital Systems includes two tutorials on the Altera CAD tool environment, an overview of programmable logic, and a design library with several easy-to-use input and output functions. These features were developed to help students get started quickly. Early design examples use schematic capture and library components. VHDL is used for more complex designs after a short introduction to VHDL-based synthesis. The approach used in this text reflects contemporary practice in industry more accurately than the more traditional TTL protoboard-based laboratory courses. Designs containing up to twenty thousand gates are possible with the Altera Student Version CAD tools and the UP 1 board. Rapid Prototyping of Digital Systems contains a number of interesting and challenging laboratory projects involving serial communications, state machines with video output, video games and graphics, simple computers, keyboard and mouse interfaces, robotics, and a RISC processor core. These projects were all developed on the student version of the Altera CAD tools and can be implemented on the Altera UP 1 board.