Glossary
Teleoperation
A human controlling a robot in real time, usually via VR headset, joystick, or leader-follower puppetry.
Teleoperation is direct human control of a robot's body. The operator's movements (or commands) are sent to the robot, which mirrors them. Used for:
- Data collection — recording teleoperated demonstrations to train imitation-learning policies.
- Remote operation — controlling a robot in an environment too dangerous, distant, or unfamiliar for autonomy.
- Demonstrations — showing what a robot's hardware can do, separate from its autonomy.
When you see a humanoid doing something impressive in a video, the first question to ask is whether it was teleoperated. If a human is wearing a VR headset off-camera, the intelligence is human, not the robot's.
Common teleop hardware: HTC Vive / Meta Quest controllers, GELLO leader arms, ALOHA puppet rigs, custom haptic devices.