Teleoperation
Controlling a robot or machine from a distance, with a human operator sending commands and usually watching through the robot's own cameras and sensors.
Photo: Sebastian Scholz (Nuki) / Unsplash
Teleoperation is long established in bomb disposal, underwater work and robotic surgery. It has become a home-robot topic because robot makers and labs use it in three ways: to finish tasks the robot’s software cannot handle yet, to recover when the robot gets stuck, and to record demonstrations that become training data for embodied AI models. 1X, for example, says on its NEO order page that for complex tasks NEO does not know, an Expert from 1X can remotely supervise it at scheduled times.
Two trade-offs follow. Remote control is only as good as the connection: high latency makes fine movements slow and clumsy. And in a home, the operator may see what the robot’s cameras see, so it matters when a session can start, whether the household is told, and what is recorded.
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