  For humanoids to be deployed in demanding situations, such as search and
rescue, highly intelligent decision making and proficient sensorimotor skill is
expected. A promising solution is to leverage human prowess by interconnecting
robot and human via teleoperation. Towards creating seamless operation, this
paper presents a dynamic telelocomotion framework that synchronizes the gait of
a human pilot with the walking of a bipedal robot. First, we introduce a method
to generate a virtual human walking model from the stepping behavior of a human
pilot which serves as a reference for the robot to walk. Second, the dynamics
of the walking reference and robot walking are synchronized by applying forces
to the human pilot and the robot to achieve dynamic similarity between the two
systems. This enables the human pilot to continuously perceive and cancel any
asynchrony between the walking reference and robot. A consistent step placement
strategy for the robot is derived to maintain dynamic similarity through step
transitions. Using our human-machine-interface, we demonstrate that the human
pilot can achieve stable and synchronous teleoperation of a simulated robot
through stepping-in-place, walking, and disturbance rejection experiments. This
work provides a fundamental step towards transferring human intelligence and
reflexes to humanoid robots.
