Getting started with AI and robotics: books and starter kits
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Our comparisons show what AI tools and robots can do. If you want to try for yourself how language models, image recognition and robotics work, a small budget goes a surprisingly long way. These are the books and kits that make getting started work – from the first overview to your own robot.
Books to get started
- Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and PyTorch* – The standard practical introduction for readers with some Python who want to train their own models.
- Life 3.0 (Max Tegmark)* – Not a manual but the big question: how will AI change work, society and ourselves?
Starter kits: hands-on AI and robotics
- Makeblock mBot2* – Learning robot for kids and beginners, programmable with blocks or Python.
- Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB)* – The mini computer as the base for your own AI and robotics projects.
- Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ (26 TOPS)* – Accelerator board for the Raspberry Pi 5 – run image recognition locally, without the cloud.
- SunFounder PiDog* – Robot dog kit for the Raspberry Pi that can be connected to a language model.
- Freenove Robot Dog Kit* – Four-legged kit for the Raspberry Pi – gaits, camera, your own programs.
- NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit* – For advanced users: local AI models on robot hardware. The link opens an Amazon search because several sellers offer it.