A robot system including: a robot manipulator that includes links interconnected by joints with degrees of freedom that are at least partially redundant to one another; an operating unit configured to detect an input from a user with respect to at least one selected direction of a force; and a control unit configured to receive the input from the operating unit, determine components of a transpose of a Jacobian matrix associated with a respective selected direction for a predetermined position and/or orientation of a distal end of the robot manipulator in a null space such that a first metric based on the components satisfies one of following criteria: unequal to zero, greater than a specified limit, or a maximum, and control the robot manipulator to move a subset of the links in the null space so as to assume a pose according to the components as determined.