Robot Learning

Kinesthetic Teaching

Kinesthetic teaching is a demonstration method in which a human physically guides the robot's body through a task while the robot records its own joint trajectories, typically with the arm in a gravity-compensated, freely backdrivable mode. It requires no retargeting since demonstrations are captured directly in the robot's embodiment, though the teacher's presence occludes cameras and hand-guiding multi-limb systems is awkward.

Why it matters for physical AI

Hand-guiding is the fastest way for non-programmers to teach single-arm skills, and its embodiment-matched trajectories feed directly into imitation learning and skill libraries without correspondence problems.