Kinesthetic teaching beats teleop for dynamic and precise SO-101 tasks, but can't record grip force

kamathsblog · x · 2026-11-13

Developer giacomoran stumbled into kinesthetic teaching while building UMI for the SO-101 (5 DoF):

Throwing a ball: far more natural than teleoperation for dynamic tasks.
Playing a GBA: precise enough to press tiny buttons, which standard SO-101 teleop struggles with badly.
Picking up a cube: reveals the key flaw — rigid fingers only record position, not grip force. In teleop, the follower's servo converts the leader's over-travel into squeeze force, so the policy learns to command the gap. With kinesthetic teaching, touching and squeezing the cube give identical positions, so the policy never learns to actually grip.

Takeaway: teleop records grip force almost by accident; soft fingers or force sensing may be needed to close the gap.

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