Lessons from the Development and Deployment of Dante II

Dante II is a unique walking robot that provides important insight into high-mobility robotic locomotion and remote robotic exploration. In 1994 it was deployed and successfully tested in a remote Alaskan volcano. For more than five days the robot explored alone in the volcano crater using a combination of supervised autonomous control and teleoperated control. The robot and field experiment are first overviewed to provide context for the focus of the paper—lessons learned. It is the degree by which we can learn from the Dante project that will determine its lasting significance.