User instruction for semi-autonomous mobile robot control

We describe a system to help prospective users translate their skills in physical mobility to interactive mobile robot control. As part of our work on deictic visual servoing interfaces, this training system graphically depicts the commands necessary to make a robot follow a path which the user draws through an environment. This allows people to learn to identify navigation targets appropriate to the task they are attempting to accomplish, the robot´s kinematics and the environment it moves through. The system also helps to demonstrate that deictic commands provide a generally intuitive control modality