Teleoperation

Direct Teaching

Direct Teaching is the programming of a robot by physically guiding it through desired motions, also called kinesthetic teaching or hand-guiding, with the trajectory recorded for replay or as training data. It requires gravity-compensated, backdrivable, or force-sensing hardware so the arm follows the human's hand, and is a standard commissioning mode on collaborative robots. ISO/TS 15066 covers hand-guided operation as a collaborative scenario.

Why it matters for physical AI

Hand-guiding lets non-programmers produce demonstrations in minutes, lowering the skill barrier for both classical waypoint programming and imitation learning data collection on factory floors.