Teleoperation – Definition & Meaning

Definition of teleoperation

: the remote control of a robot or machine by a human operator, often through a headset, controllers, cameras, or motion-tracking equipment, either to complete a task or to record demonstrations for training an AI system
- During teleoperation, an operator used a VR headset to guide the robot's hands through folding a towel.
- The lab recorded hundreds of teleoperation sessions and used them as demonstration data for the robot policy.

Two meanings, one word

In everyday English

The act of operating something from a distance.

In AI

The remote control of a robot or machine by a human operator, often through a headset, controllers, cameras, or motion-tracking equipment, either to complete a task or…

Origin & history

first known use1952

Modern teleoperation grew from electrically actuated master-slave manipulators developed in the early 1950s, including Raymond Goertz's 1952 system for handling radioactive material. The practice later expanded to space, underwater work, surgery, autonomous vehicles, and AI robotics.

Test yourself

Which of these is the meaning of teleoperation?

Related terms

human-in-the-loop describing a system in which a person reviews, approves, or corrects an AI's work at key… humanoid robot a robot with a roughly human body shape, including legs, arms, and often hands, designed to… physical AI AI that understands and acts in the physical world, powering robots, self-driving cars… imitation learning a way of training an AI system or robot to perform a task by learning from examples of an… training data the collection of examples, observations, labels, actions, or feedback that a model learns… vision-language-action model a model that takes in camera images and spoken or written instructions and directly outputs… degrees of freedom the number of independent variables, axes, or joint movements needed to describe the possible… disengagement an event in which an autonomous driving or robotic system is deactivated and control passes to…

Cite this entry

"Teleoperation." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/teleoperation/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2026.