Robotic teleportation method and system

An autonomous system comprising:

• at least one agent, each said agent corresponding to a collection of data structures defining functional capabilities of a robot, said collection of data structures constituting a behavioural identity of said robot, said robot comprising a supporting device being a physical installation in which said agent can be embodied, at least some of said data structures being subject to change during operation of the robot, having a controlling influence on the operation of the robot, and being distinguishable from and isolatable from said supporting device, said at least some data structures constituting the state of the agent, said agent, when embodied in a supporting device, having a core implementation in which first code is defined;
• a supporting device in which one of said at least one agents is embodied so as to constitute a robot having a behavioural identity corresponding to the embodied agent, said supporting device comprising:
• hardware components having a configuration which can be defined using second code and data,
• software components for controlling general operation of said hardware components,
• software components for maintaining an agent environment and parts of the agent implementation that do not change, and
• software components for reading/writing said data structures of said agent that are subject to change during operation of the robot and that constitute the agent state;
• extraction means for extracting the agent state and transforming the extracted agent state into a representation which can be transmitted across a data transmission network;
• and
• inserting means for inserting a received agent state into the supporting device whereby to constitute a robot having a behavioural identity corresponding to an agent having the received agent state.