Effectiveness of bimanual kinesthetic teaching through different controller settings

Physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) through kinesthetic teaching enables intuitive robot programming, but extending this approach to bimanual systems introduces challenges in synchronized control. Thus, the best way to control bimanual robot systems for kinesthetic teaching remains unclear. In this paper we evaluate bimanual kinesthetic teaching from the demonstrator's perspective, showing how different modes of control can affect both demonstration performance and user experience. Our study, in which participants kinesthetically taught a bimanual robot to perform a pick-and-place task, showed that the relative stiffness of the two robots significantly affects task timing and operator perception.