-Following the format of a life story, Nocks provides a volume for students and general readers on the development of robot technology. The volume moves from the robot's forerunners, to its invention, prominence, and final decline. How the technology affected society and culture is interwoven with the description of its history. She begins as far back as myths in ancient times, discusses clock and toymakers of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, and considers twentieth century advances in control engineering, the incorporation of robots in industry, and artificial intelligence and recent developments that incorporate perception, independence, and artificial muscles. —SciTech Book News

-Concise and direct to the point, Nocks' technography on the robot offers a rich overview of the systems we understand as robotic. It summarizes the 30-some year-long history of a plethora of ideas, experiments, and implementations that have found their places in our everyday lives.... Kudos to the author on the perfect marriage between coverage and length in this volume. In fewer than 200 pages, one finds great essays that do not leave too much out. Everything relevant to robotics today can be found here, albeit in an introductory form. But that is exactly what this book aims to achieve: to give us the grand picture of a grand technology, and motivate us to explore further. Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty. —Choice