I had a little trouble too. I believe the operator is entirely in charge of moving the machine, and the machine automatically adjusts the cutter within its housing to stay on target. So close your eyes and move slowly and it supposedly figures out the rest.
The screen on top displays an image of the path the bit needs to follow. The user runs it like a normal router, and as the router moves, the path on the screen moves too. The user needs to keep the routerbit roughly close to the path and follow the line on the screen. The spindle of the router has X and Y movement within an inch or so in the body of the tool, and compensates for the user's rough movementto create the correct cut that was programed.
I remember seeing this a few years ago when it first came out. Neat idea.
You place patterned tape on the wood. The router uses it to recognize where it is on the whole piece, and track it's movement. Like any CNC, you have to tell it the shape you want to cut.
You get a 'safe zone' that shows the range limits of the cutting head, and the head does all the fine movement within that zone. You move the zone around so it can cut the whole pattern.
I thought real hard about one of these. I think it could be great for the occasional project needing more precision than one can get by hand. But the expendable cost of the pattern tape kept me away.
I was about to start comparing it to the Festool routers when I saw that Festool designed the spindle and Festool's parent company now owns Shaper. I bet it's a costly part replacement - little different than a $100 Colt from whatever store down the street to keep your run-of-the-mill CNC going.