You may remember the BigDog robot by Boston Dynamics - a robotic pack animal developed on behalf of the US military.
Surgeons learn to operate the robot by practising on cadavers.
"No tool will need to be handed to a robot by a scrub nurse," he said.
Toyota hopes to offer a commercial version of the robot by 2010.
An operator can direct the robot by moving a cursor around inside the hologram.
The Robo Rapiers, made up of young medievalists, have designs like a horse-and-carriage robot by Palmer Menken, 8 (above), and a dragon robot by Daniel Allen, 10, Ms. Allen's son.
A walking robot, by contrast, can fall in many directions, including some that cannot easily be counteracted by a motor.
A new piloted craft could be built by 2006, it said, and the robot by 2004 or 2005.
You can operate this robot by remote control from any Web browser, guiding it by watching the video from its nose-cone camera.
About six months ago, Dr. Adkins was asked to work on the robot by Dr. Ed Heller, another researcher at Sandia, in Albuquerque.
However, the two researchers hope to change that for their next robot by incorporating a Kinect, a motion-tracking device developed by Microsoft for use in video gaming.
