1/3 or more of this book was commented Java source code. The other 1/3 was a really bad version of The Catcher in the Rye writing style about what someone wishes to do with his robots one day. There was little to no technical content about robots or programming for that matter. I was very disappointed with this book. Had I browsed through it at the bookstore I would have never spent a dime on it.

There's not a lot of detailed technical information but the book does a good job of listing a range of ideas and sources for building Linux robots. As an expert-level Linux Administrator, a decent C and Python programmer who is familiar with Java and as a budding roboticist, I found the book very useful.

It is fare to say Mr. Newman is very competent programming and using Linux. The one star rating has more to do with content and publishing rather than a knock on Mr. Newman. It was obvious he was under time constraints and that this was his first book. He spends more time talking about features that are not working yet or that he wants to implement, than the process to build the robot in his book. The majority of the book is short descriptions without depth. The title and the table of contents are very unreflective of the text contained in the book. The book has 155 pages of "content" and 120 pages of Appendix. The code in the 119 pages of Appendix A while well written could have been included on a CD and much more detail added to the book. It reads, looks and is a rush job. It is clear Mr. Newman has skills and a firm grasp of Robotics and Linux. It is also very clear that this TAB book is a bust. I returned the book. If you are looking for an in-depth Linux and Robotics book then you are much better off with Open-Source Robotics and Process Control Cookbook: Designing and Building Robust, Dependable Real-time Systems
By Lewin Edwards. I bought this at the same time I bought Mr. Newman's book. I also own Lewin Edwards first book.
Embedded System Design on a Shoestring
I consider both of Lewin Edwards works mentioned above as must have books.

I have this book and it has more than enough information to build a very capable robot that makes most of those that you can buy a toy.
Using free (as in free beer) software from the internet you can make a robot that can be anything that you want with just a little thought. The information is supplied in sections starting from some basic knowedge you can create a robot a piece at a time. The information covers movement - internal networking between indivual control modules to internet networking of the robot, to having the robot figure out where in the world or house it is and how does it get to where it needs to be. All the source code for the software is in the book and available from the authors site. It is a great starting place for a very potent robot.

Building Robots has become a fascination to a lot of people, including Mr. Newman, the author of this book. His robots are a long ways from C3PO. He basically build a robot mounted on wheels that has an awful lot of electronics. But then again he is including a lot of features in his design.

There are lot of ways to implement the controller. In this case he uses a small size but standard PC motherboard. On this board he runs a Linux operating system. In spite of the title, this is not really a book on how to use Linux to control robots. He just happens to use Linux for his robot because it is cheaper than Windows.

Most of the programming information he gives is the form of Java progrms that will handle the various devices (such as vision) that he wants built into his robots. In fact, much of the book, too much in fact, is given over to code. The code is available on line, reprinting it here in the book is pretty boring reading.

The book is a good introduction on how to design and build a robot using standard components. Here's how you can get started.