Supervisory interface with expert systems for semiautonomous walking robots

Technological progress has been made toward achieving adaptive legged locomotion in "robots." Current efforts in this area involve three phases of development; manual operation by an on-board operator, teleoperation, and semiautonomous to autonomous operation. It is the latter that presents the greatest challenge, both in terms of software design and in interfacing a human supervisor with the autonomous expert system. This paper traces some of the development behind these efforts and examines the organization of such systems for a walking vehicle, briefly outlining research in progress.