Shared autonomy

Driving a two-legged robot joint by joint is impossible for a person. Staying upright needs corrections many times a second, far faster than anyone can react.

So the robot keeps itself standing while a person supplies the plan. Minerva Humanoids describes exactly this for its bomb-disposal robot: onboard software manages balance, walking and fall recovery, and the operator in a headset directs the hands.

When a company says a demo was partly teleoperated, this is usually what it means. Nucleus, for example, put one session at roughly 60 percent autonomous and 40 percent teleoperated.