This book can be read front to back, but application builders often need a direct route. Use these pathways when your goal is to build drones, autonomous vehicles, humanoids, mobile manipulators, industrial fleets, VLA systems, simulation-first policies, SLAM systems, safety cases, or research capstones.
Each pathway names the chapters to read, the sections to prioritize, and the artifact to produce. The common artifact is always the same: an operating-domain card, a state-action contract, a scenario panel, a safety boundary, a metric artifact, and a replayable failure case.
| Application | Primary Chapters | Build Artifact |
|---|---|---|
| Humanoid robots | 5, 7, 8, 20, 21, 35, 45, 46, 54 | Whole-body control trial with contact schedule and safety monitor. |
| Drones and aerial robots | 8, 11, 13, 20, 29, 30, 47, 54 | PX4 evidence ladder from SITL to flight log review. |
| Autonomous vehicles | 5, 8, 13, 30, 36, 48, 52, 54 | Closed-loop scenario panel with ODD and safety-case defeaters. |
| Mobile manipulation | 30, 31, 34, 35, 42, 43, 44, 50 | Route, reachability, grasp, and recovery task card. |
| Industrial fleets | 30, 49, 52, 54, 55, 59 | Fleet dashboard with throughput, interventions, congestion, and incidents. |
| VLA and robot foundation models | 21, 25, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 58 | Fine-tuning and serving card with calibration, latency, and rollback. |
| Simulation-first robot learning | 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 36, 59 | Sim-to-hardware reproducibility card with failure replay. |
| SLAM and navigation systems | 27, 28, 29, 30, 47 | Mapping and navigation manifest with degraded-sensing perturbations. |
| Safety-critical embodied AI | 52, 53, 54, 55 | Assurance argument with claims, evidence, defeaters, and residual risk. |
| Research platforms and capstones | 56, 57, 58, 59, 60 | Application-track capstone with reproducible metric artifact. |
The robot body changes the math and tools, but the engineering proof remains stable: define the domain, expose the interface, test the scenario panel, save the evidence, and explain the failure.
A drone builder can start with Chapters 8, 29, 30, and 47, then use Chapter 54 for operational risk. A VLA builder can start with Chapters 21, 34, and 35, then use Chapter 55 for serving and Chapter 59 for a capstone template.