Bimanual Teleoperation

Location: examples/bimanual_lead_follower/

Run coordinated dual-arm teleoperation with two leader and two follower YAM arms. This is the primary example for the YAM Cell.

Hardware Required

• 2× YAM follower arms (any gripper)
• 2× YAM leader arms (with yam_teaching_handle gripper)
• 4× CANable USB-CAN adapters
• 1× Workstation PC (Ubuntu 22.04)

Setup

📷

Photo — Coming Soon

Bimanual YAM Cell setup on a table: leader arms on the left (operator side), follower arms on the right (task side). All four arms visible, cables routed neatly.

1. Assign persistent CAN IDs

Plug one CANable at a time and follow the Persistent CAN IDs guide to assign each adapter a fixed name.

Target layout:

Arm	Interface
Left follower	can_follower_l
Right follower	can_follower_r
Left leader	can_leader_l
Right leader	can_leader_r

2. Verify all four interfaces

ip a | grep can
# Expected:
# can_follower_r  UP
# can_follower_l  UP
# can_leader_r    UP
# can_leader_l    UP

3. Activate the virtual environment

source .venv/bin/activate

4. Launch

python examples/bimanual_lead_follower/bimanual_lead_follower.py

Operation

Action	Result
Move either leader arm	Corresponding follower mirrors motion
Squeeze trigger on teaching handle	Follower gripper closes
Top button (press once)	Enable synchronization
Top button (press again)	Disable synchronization

Start position

Before enabling sync, move the leader arms to roughly match the follower arm positions. Large position errors on first sync can cause abrupt motion.

Video

🎬

Video — Coming Soon

Bimanual teleoperation demo: operator moves two leader arms to pick up objects with two follower arms simultaneously. Tasks shown: pick-and-place, handoff, assembly. 2–3 minutes.

🎬

Video — Coming Soon

Close-up: leader arm teaching handle trigger being used to operate the follower gripper while picking a small object.

Architecture

The example launches two minimum_gello.py instances internally — one per arm pair — sharing the same enable/disable logic through the top button.

# Conceptually equivalent to:
python examples/minimum_gello/minimum_gello.py --gripper linear_4310 --mode follower --can-channel can_follower_l --bilateral_kp 0.2
python examples/minimum_gello/minimum_gello.py --gripper yam_teaching_handle --mode leader --can-channel can_leader_l --bilateral_kp 0.2
# (mirrored for right pair)

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
Missing CAN interface	Check ip a, replug adapters one at a time
Arm not following	Ensure sync is enabled (top button)
Jittery motion	Lower --bilateral_kp to 0.1
Motor timeout errors	Reduce loop latency; check USB-CAN adapter

See Also

• YAM Cell
• YAM Arm API
• Hardware Setup