Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) presents a system that learns from demonstrations of a human operator and then produces a sensor-driven program that can control a robot without operator intervention. The system generates a procedural program, identical in function to a procedural program developed in a conventional robot programming language, that can be easily re-used in similar but different application tasks. In essence, based on the skills demonstrated by a human teacher, a robot can be automatically programmed to perform complex assembly tasks. Robot users with no programming skills will be able to "bootstrap" themselves to a semi-autonomous operation after a small number of taught examples. In addition, as the task requirements change, the robot can be re-programmed as easily as it was initially programmed. Unlike the conventional program development process, the operator need not postulate about the value of sensor feedback variables required at a particular level of the controller. In fact, the operator need not be familiar with the syntax and semantics of the programming language at all.