KUKAloha: A General, Low-Cost, and Shared-Control based Teleoperation Framework for Construction Robot Arm

Yifan Xu; Qizhang Shen; Vineet Kamat; Carol Menassa

cs.ROMar 20, 2026

KUKAloha: A General, Low-Cost, and Shared-Control based Teleoperation Framework for Construction Robot Arm

Authors: Yifan Xu, Qizhang Shen, Vineet Kamat, Carol Menassa

Organizations: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, United States of America · Department of Robotics, University of Michigan, United States of America

Abstract

This paper presents KUKAloha, a general, low-cost, and shared-control teleoperation framework designed for construction robot arms. The proposed system employs a leader-follower paradigm in which a lightweight leading arm enables intuitive human guidance for coarse robot motion, while an autonomous perception module based on AprilTag detection performs precise alignment and grasp execution. By explicitly decoupling human control from fine manipulation, KUKAloha improves safety and repeatability when operating large-scale manipulators. We implement the framework on a KUKA robot arm and conduct a usability study with representative construction manipulation tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that KUKAloha reduces operator workload, improves task completion efficiency, and provides a practical solution for scalable demonstration collection and shared human-robot control in construction environments.

Figures & tables

Figure 1: The current ways of teleoperation of construction robot

Figure 3: Custom 7-DoF leader arm used as the teleoperation interface. The tabletop device is approximately $1\!:\!7$ scale relative to the KUKA follower manipulator and is operated kinesthetically by the user via the contoured handle at the distal link.

Method	Success Rate	Time (s)	Position Error(m)	Orientation Error(rad)	Collision Rate
VR/AR Control	35%	89.57	0.33	0.704	55%
Teach Pendant	85%	258.74	0.04	0.106	0%
Leader–Follower	60%	77.59	0.26	0.522	10%
KUKAloha ( Ours )	80%	43.56	0.02	0.087	5%

Table 1: Performance comparison of different teleoperation methods

Robot Teleoperation

Robot teleoperation studies how people remotely control robots through interfaces, sensing, feedback, and autonomy, despite distance, delay, and embodiment gaps.

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Perception-and-action system for humanoid robot task execution in construction

Yanxi Liu, Yizhi Liu

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse University, 158 Link Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse University, 151J Link Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA

Robotic Construction Motion Retargeting Robot Imitation Learning Humanoid Robotics

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Humanoid robots, with their human-like shape and multi-tasking capabilities, are well-aligned with human-dominated workplaces, like those in civil and construction engineering, where they could collaborate with human workers or autonomously perform physically demanding and hazardous tasks. Despite this promise, limited research has explored how to endow these robots with the practical capabilities needed to perform construction tasks. To this end, this study proposes a novel perception-and-action system that enables humanoid robots to learn and perform construction tasks from worker demonstrations. This system contains two deep networks: Humanoid-PoseNet, which extracts human postures and translates them into mechanically feasible poses for a humanoid robot; and Humanoid-ActionNet, which learns robot-executable actions based on these translated poses. Experimental results demonstrate that the humanoid robot reliably executed eight construction-related actions, achieving an average motion-tracking error of 82.45 mm MPJPE (Mean Per Joint Position Error). This work provides an early step toward deploying humanoid collaborators in construction.

Abstract

Robot Teleoperation

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