US Patent 9283675 Human-machine collaborative robotic systems

A semi-automatic, interactive robotic system for performing and/or simulating a multi-step task includes a user interface system, a recognition system adapted to communicate with the user interface system, a control system adapted to communicate with the recognition system, and a sensor-actuator system adapted to communicate with the control system. The recognition system is configured to recognize actions taken by a user while the user operates the user interface system and to selectively instruct the control system to cause the sensor-actuator system to perform, and/or simulate, one of an automatic step, a semi-automatic step or direct step of the multi-step task based on the recognized actions and a task model of the multi-step task.