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arXiv · 2510.01603

MiniBEE: A New Form Factor for Compact Bimanual Dexterity

Sharfin Islam·Zewen Chen·Zhanpeng He·Swapneel Bhatt·Andres Permuy·Brock Taylor·James Vickery·Zhengbin Lu·Cheng Zhang·Pedro Piacenza·Matei Ciocarlie
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Abstract

Bimanual robot manipulators can achieve impressive dexterity, but typically rely on two full six- or seven- degree-of-freedom arms so that paired grippers can coordinate effectively. This traditional framework increases system complexity while only exploiting a fraction of the overall workspace for dexterous interaction. We introduce the MiniBEE (Miniature Bimanual End-effector), a compact system in which two reduced-mobility arms (3+ DOF each) are coupled into a kinematic chain that preserves full relative positioning between grippers. To guide our design, we formulate a kinematic dexterity metric that enlarges the dexterous workspace while keeping the mechanism lightweight and wearable. The resulting system supports two complementary modes: (i) wearable kinesthetic data collection with self-tracked gripper poses, and (ii) deployment on a standard robot arm, extending dexterity across its entire workspace. We present kinematic analysis and design optimization methods for maximizing dexterous range, and demonstrate an end-to-end pipeline in which wearable demonstrations train imitation learning policies that perform robust, real-world bimanual manipulation.

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Sharfin Islam, Zewen Chen, Zhanpeng He, Swapneel Bhatt, Andres Permuy, Brock Taylor, James Vickery, Zhengbin Lu, Cheng Zhang, Pedro Piacenza, Matei Ciocarlie. 2025-10-02. MiniBEE: A New Form Factor for Compact Bimanual Dexterity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01603

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