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This paper addresses the problem of automotie akill acquisition by a mbot. It reports that six triols of a reach-grasp-release-rYt~ct skill are suflicient for learning a canonical description of the task under the follouting circumstances: The mbot is Robonaut, NASA's space-capable, desterous humanoid. Robonaut was teleoperated by a person using full immersion Virtual Reality technology that tmnsforms the openator's a n and hand motions into those of the robot. The operator's sole S O U I C~ of real-time feedback was visual. DUTing the s*: trials all of the Robot's senaory inputs and motor control pammeters were recorded as time-series. Later the time-series from each trial was paditioned into the same number of episodes as a function of changes in the motor parameter sequence. The episodes were time normalized and avemged D C M S I trials The resultant motor parameter sequence and sensor signals w e r~ used to eontml the mbot without the teleopemtor. The mbot wuas able to perform the task autonomously with mbot starting positions and object locations both similar to, and different from the original trials.Fig. 1. Robonaut, NASA's space capable humanoid robot

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Autonomous robots and vehicles must occasionally recover from locomotion failure in loosely consolidated granular terrain. Recent mobility challenges led NASA Johnson Space Center to develop a prototype robotic lunar rover Resource Prospector 15 (RP15) capable of wheeled, legged, and crawling behavior. To systematically understand the terradynamic performance of such a device, we developed a scaled-down rover robot and studied its locomotion on slopes of dry and wet granular media. Addition of a cyclic-legged gait to the robot’s wheel spinning action changes the robot dynamics from that of a wheeled vehicle to a locomotor paddling through frictional fluid. Granular drag force measurements and modified resistive force theory facilitate modeling of such dynamics. A peculiar gait strategy that agitates and cyclically reflows grains under the robot allows it to “swim” up loosely consolidated hills. Whereas substrate disturbance typically hinders locomotion in granular media, the multimode design of RP15 and a diversity of possible gaits facilitate formation of self-organized localized frictional fluids that enable effective robust transport.