Mr. Heverly and his teammates tell the vehicle where to go next by entering hundreds of computer commands.
Also at the Mobile World Congress, NTT DoCoMo, the Japanese carrier, had a similarly weird demonstration of headphones, above, which could translate eye movements into computer commands.
While the pointing was controlled by computer commands, the movement of the turning dome still clanked and creaked like a battleship under way.
Last November, for example, an Illinois center reported that Russian hackers had broken into the computer system of a local water district in Springfield and sent computer commands that triggered a water pump to burn out.
At a recent meeting with a reporter, he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a folded piece of yellow paper with handwritten instructions for simple computer commands like cut and paste.
One option engineers are examining is creating computer commands to bypass use of this joint in backup mode to see if the arm can do its job with a different set of movements using the other six joints, he said.
