Teleoperation Hardware

GELLO profile: a printed leader arm for Franka, UR5 and xArm

A replica of your robot arm, printed and assembled for under $300, that controls the real one joint for joint.

By The editors · Updated · 2 min read

Contents
  1. How it works
  2. Published evidence
  3. Strengths and limits
  4. Pricing
  5. Questions to settle before building
  6. Sources
TypeOpen-source leader arm
FoundedPublished in 2023
PricingPublished
Websitewuphilipp.github.io

Labs that own a research arm often teleoperate it with whatever is at hand, usually a 3D mouse or a VR controller. GELLO, from Philipp Wu and colleagues at UC Berkeley, was built to replace those with something cheap that feels like moving the robot itself⁠1.

Best for: Teams that already own a Franka, UR5 or xArm and want joint-space control of it for a few hundred dollars.

Not the right fit for: Robots with hands, or teams that want a product with a vendor behind it.

How it works

GELLO is a scaled, kinematically equivalent copy of the target arm, made from 3D-printed parts and off-the-shelf motors. The operator moves its joints and the robot’s joints follow, so control is in joint space. The authors built versions for three common arms, the Franka, the UR5 and the xArm, and state that the parts cost less than $300 and that assembly takes about 30 minutes. All software and hardware are open-sourced⁠12.

Published evidence

The authors ran a user study with 12 participants and five tasks on a bimanual setup of two UR5 robots, comparing GELLO with VR controllers and 3D mice. They report consistently faster completion times with GELLO⁠1. The paper also shows bimanual and contact-rich tasks⁠2. These are the authors’ own results; we found no independent replication on the pages we read.

Strengths and limits

Strengths

  • Drives real research arms rather than its own small robot: the authors built versions for the Franka, the UR5 and the xArm.
  • Controls the robot in joint space, which avoids the conversion from hand pose to joint angles.
  • In the authors’ user study, 12 participants completed five tasks faster with GELLO than with VR controllers or 3D mice.

Limits

  • A build, not a product: there is no vendor, warranty or support line.
  • Each design matches one arm. A different robot needs a different replica.
  • It captures the arm’s joints, not fingers.

Choose another option if: You have no robot yet (SO-101), your robot has dexterous hands (a glove or a headset) or you want a supported station (Trossen).

Pricing

Parts cost less than $300 per controller, as reported by the authors in 2023.

Questions to settle before building

  • Is there a published GELLO design for our exact arm, or will we adapt one?
  • Who owns the build and the repairs?
  • What will record the episodes, and in what format?
  • Does the task need two arms, and therefore two controllers and a frame?

See how GELLO compares with the other options in the rig comparison table.

Sources

  1. GELLO: a general, low-cost and intuitive teleoperation framework for robot manipulators. Wu, Shentu, Yi, Lin and Abbeel, UC Berkeley. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.
  2. GELLO: A General, Low-Cost, and Intuitive Teleoperation Framework for Robot Manipulators. arXiv, 22 Sep 2023. Accessed 11 Nov 2026.

Further reading