Patent ID: 8326461

Claim:
Adaptive means for providing autonomous capabilities to an interactive robot system, said interactive robot system comprising a remote operator control unit (OCU) comprising a two way radio, ( 6 ), an OCU antenna, an OCU sensor data display/user interface, and an OCU extraneous command interface and whereby OCU commands can be entered through said OCU sensor data display/user interface to generate standardized OCU command signals which are broadcast by the two way radio ( 6 ) over the OCU antenna in a standardized OCU data stream; and said interactive robot system further comprising a robot device with a robot antenna, another two way radio, ( 1 ), and said robot device including means for generating a standardized robot data stream which is broadcast through the two way radio ( 1 ) of the robot device and the robot antenna towards the OCU antenna, said standardized robot data stream being representative of conditions within the robot device, and robot device including means for responding to said standardized OCU data stream received over said robot antenna and the two way radio ( 1 ) of the robot device to control said robot device to operate in accordance with said OCU commands, said adaptive means comprising: an add-on robot communication box that is externally connected to the robot device without modification to internal components of the robot device wherein said add-on robot communication box includes an additional a two way radio, ( 2 ) and a yet further two way radio, ( 3 ), a robot microprocessor unit, a robot bidirectional attenuator; and a first computer program product that runs on said robot microprocessor unit to integrate enhanced robot data into the standardized robot data stream; and an add-on OCU communication box that is externally connected to the operator control unit (OCU) without modification to internal components of the operator control unit (OCU), wherein the add-on OCU communication box comprises a still further two way radio, ( 4 ) and a yet additional two way radio, ( 5 ), an operator control unit (OCU) microprocessor unit; an OCU bidirectional attenuator device, and a second computer program product that runs on the operator control unit (OCU) microprocessor unit, to integrate enhanced OCU data into said standardized OCU data stream.