This data concerns a robot control problem. Here are some comments by Ross
Quinlan obtained from the UCI repository.
"I seem to remember that the data was from a simulation of a servo system
involving a servo amplifier, a motor, a lead screw/nut, and a sliding carriage
of some sort. It may have been on of the translational axes of a robot on the
9th floor of the AI lab. In any case, the output value is almost certainly a
rise time, or the time required for the system to respond to a step change in a
position set point."
(Quinlan, ML'93)
"This is an interesting collection of data provided by Karl Ulrich. It covers
an extremely non-linear phenomenon - predicting the rise time of a
servomechanism in terms of two (continuous) gain settings and two (discrete)
choices of mechanical linkages."