Sharpa has shown its W02 hand catching a toy: the operator reaches out and closes their hand as the toy comes in, and W02 mirrors the movement in real time. Sharpa says the compact, human-scale, fully tactile hand turns a natural human gesture directly into robotic motion, bringing intuitive control to real-world manipulation.
Clone Robotics said the Hand of Torso 3, built in April 2026, is the last of its legacy hand designs. Over the past six months the company rebuilt the whole system from the ground up, optimizing for simulatability and controllability while keeping human-level capabilities intact.
Clone Robotics posted a demo of teleoperated control of the Hand of Torso 3, the company's final legacy hand design, with the hand following operator input in real time.
Boston Dynamics unveiled a new four-fingered hand for its Atlas humanoid with 13 degrees of freedom, direct actuation, and no pinky. The company says the design is optimized for simulation-based reinforcement learning and tool use, and that dropping the pinky avoids unnecessary complexity.
Sanctuary AI published Part 1 of its Dexterity Explained series, outlining what manual dexterity is, why it matters, and how robotic hands and Physical AI work together to add skill, precision and control to physical tasks. The company said the more dexterous robots become, the more complex industrial work they can take on.
Boston Dynamics unveiled a redesigned Atlas hand optimized for ruggedness, manufacturability, and cost rather than human-like appearance. The 13-DOF hand adds a fourth finger and splay capability while using direct-drive actuators to target 100,000 units per year.
Boston Dynamics has shown new hands for its Atlas humanoid robot. The hands offer 13 degrees of freedom and are directly actuated, built for high-fidelity simulation to enable sim-to-real reinforcement learning. The company says they were designed from the ground up for dexterous physical work.
Boston Dynamics has equipped its electric Atlas with new 13-DoF hands designed for real work in simulation-first development. The company dropped the pinky after tests showed most tasks remained unaffected, saving actuators and signaling a shift toward scalable commercial labor.
Sharpa's W01 SE dexterous hand can rotate an object continuously in hand, coordinating all five fingers in real time. It runs 30 FPS on-board inference with a dynamic tactile array, delivering 2 mm spatial resolution, 50 mN force sensing sensitivity and a 30 FPS tactile sensing frame rate.
Sharpa's W01 dexterous hand can continuously spin and control a pen, coordinating all five fingers in real time with 180 FPS on-host inference. Its proprietary Dynamic Tactile Array provides more than 1,000 tactile pixels per fingertip, 1 mm spatial resolution and 20 mN pressure sensitivity.
Sharpa says dexterity goes beyond grasping: continuous manipulation requires all five fingers to coordinate in real time while keeping control of an object in motion. The company's W01 and W01 SE hands demonstrate two forms of multi-finger dexterous manipulation.
Sharpa showed its D01 robot performing a full bartending sequence, from uncapping to pouring, shaking and mixing. D01 is teleoperated through the AE01, a 22-DoF hand-glove twin that maps the operator's hand movements directly to the robot. The company said D01 combines fine manipulation with high-speed motion and 1:1 human-scale spherical wrist joints, with maximum end-effector speed above 10.5 m/s.
Sharpa kept its booth busy with live demonstrations of dexterous robot skills, including the Catch the Stick Challenge, robot bartending, pen spinning, whole-body tactile response, catching a toy and in-hand rotation. The company reports steady crowds and conversations throughout the day, with more live demos at Booth 514.
Microgate Technology said on September 28 that a joint laboratory with Guangming Laboratory for micro drive joints and biomimetic dexterous hands remains in R&D and commercial incubation. The project has not yet contributed materially to operating results, and mass production will require reliability validation, cost control and customer adoption.
Sharpa introduced three new products at IROS in Pittsburgh: the D01 tactile-aware mobile manipulator, the W02 compact tactile dexterous hand, and the AE01 haptic data glove. Together they aim to close the hardware loop for complex contact-rich manipulation, from whole-body execution and fine hand control to human demonstration data collection.
The W02 dexterous hand features 21 active degrees of freedom, full-palm tactile sensing, and is 30% smaller than its predecessor. It aims to move humanoid robots from lab demos to deployable engineering components for manufacturing, service, and data-collection scenarios.
Sharpa posted clips from Day 1 of its exhibition, showing its latest hardware running real-world manipulation tasks with fast reactions, precise manipulation and rich physical interaction.
Jingshi Technology has unveiled its VIVA dexterous hand, claiming the world's first real-time human-robot four-hand piano duet. The company also announced a VIVA × CADA milestone, shifting robots from executing preset motions to artistic expression and continuous learning.
Jingshi Technology unveiled VIVA, a dexterous robotic hand that performs real-time four-hand piano duets with human pianists. The company says the hand integrates the CADA music embodied AI model, enabling musical creation, performance, and continual learning.
AgiBot subsidiary Critical Point's dexterous hand OmniHand won seven golds at the World Humanoid Robot Games. CEO Qiao Tianjie says dexterous hands are key for robots to use human tools, but reliability, algorithms and commercialization remain major challenges.
ETH Zurich researchers have built an 818-gram cableless robot hand that can use its five fingers as legs to crawl, recover from falls, and interact with objects. The project combines a humanoid hand with reinforcement learning to explore a design principle of reducing hardware and letting existing parts perform more functions.
A Tesla app leak appears to reveal production-ready Optimus Gen 3 renders. The new design shows 22-degree-of-freedom hands, simpler panels, and preparations for mass production.
Sharpa will co-host two competitions at IROS 2026: the 2nd ROCO and the Origami challenges, run with @BitRobotNetwork. Powered by Sharpa's robot platforms and software, the events brought together 48 teams from institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, UC Berkeley, KAIST and NUS, who will test robotic manipulation and dexterity on Sharpa hardware through challenging real-world tasks.
Sharpa announced three in-house developed products debuting at IROS 2026: D01, a general-purpose humanoid robot; W02, a next-generation dexterous hand; and AE01, an exoskeleton data glove. The company exhibits at Booth 514 in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, from September 27 to 30, focusing on advances in dexterous manipulation.
Engineers at ETH Zurich's Soft Robotics Lab have adapted an off-the-shelf detached robotic hand to crawl, balance, and interact with its environment. TechXplore Robotics reports that the hand can walk, press keys, and move objects on its own, echoing the fictional character Thing.
Unitree has launched the Dex5-S, a 22-degree-of-freedom dexterous hand built at a 1:1 scale with the human hand, with a Pro version starting at 39,900 yuan. The hand combines 22 integrated motors, dual-encoder control, up to 1000Hz control frequency and a palm camera option aimed at fine manipulation in industrial and research settings.
The 5th Global Digital Trade Expo will showcase nearly 2,000 companies and more than 500 AI firms in Hangzhou, with robots for pharmacy, bedding and space among the highlights. Exhibitors include unicorn Xinno Future with fully self-developed dexterous hands and Zhinuo Future with a swarm collaboration model.
Unitree has unveiled the Dex5-S, a biomimetic dexterous hand with 22 degrees of freedom and a 1:1 human-hand form factor. Priced from $6,500 (tax and shipping excluded), all 22 joints support smooth backdrivability, and every joint carries limit impact torque protection.
On September 21, Unitree Technology unveiled the Dex5-S dexterous hand, a 1:1 human-hand-sized device with 22 joints that can all be smoothly backdriven and feature built-in peak impact torque protection.
Inspire Robots has joined Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and other institutions to open-source the HandEdit dataset and benchmark for first-person human-to-dexterous-hand image editing. The release contains over 200 million editing samples across 26 URDF configurations, with Inspire's DFX and G2 hands included in the data conversion pipeline.
Chinese robot hands now cost a fraction of their 2025 prices, yet fewer than 1% of them work on automotive lines. The industry has three separate ways of judging a hand, and the one that measures lifespan has no common scale.
China Pacific Property Insurance's Beijing Branch and Beijing Daqi Yuequan Bionic Technology signed and submitted China's first insurance policy for embodied-AI key components, covering dexterous hands. The product insures equipment loss from accidents, natural disasters, defects and operator error, plus third-party injury and property damage.
A Live Science reader poll found that 42% would let a humanoid robot take over household chores, while 36% said they do not trust robots with their plates or data. Readers' comments focused less on privacy than on whether robotic hands are dexterous enough for tasks like dusting, dish loading, and floor cleaning.
Humanoid robot OEMs face thin hardware margins around 10% even as Unitree reports high gross margin, with most still unprofitable amid price wars. Dexterous hands are seeing faster price declines and higher upstream component margins, raising the question of whether OEMs will bring production in-house.
Sanctuary AI has published highlights from episodes 60 through 64 of its Robots Doing Stuff series. The five episodes cover different sides of automating complex physical work, including welding, failure recovery, bimanual threading, power tool use and delicate object handling. The company says the episodes showcase a range of Physical AI and dexterous manipulation capabilities under development at Sanctuary AI.
National standards for dexterous hands are expected to be finalized and publicly announced by the end of this year, according to the Aggregate Intelligence Industry Development Conference 2026. Multiple companies have already joined the drafting process.
Sanctuary AI shared a video recorded at the Humanoid Robot Forum during Automate 2026. Co-Founder and Chief Engineering & Operations Officer Olivia Norton explains why touch and force feedback are critical for dexterous manipulation, especially when objects are occluded or outside a robot's field of view.
Sanctuary AI highlights its approach to custom end-of-arm tooling, from low-DOF grippers to vacuum tooling, to optimize performance and throughput. The company says its robotic hands will add fine manipulation for complex tasks.
Locus Robotics is advancing into robotic picking with its Array mobile manipulator and the acquisition of Nexera Robotics for its NeuraGrasp soft gripping technology. The company prioritizes reliability and pick quality over speed, viewing tactile sensing as a key frontier in manipulation.
PaXini partnered with HKU MMLab to mount its high-performance tactile sensors on the fingertips of MM-Hand 1.5. The collaboration demonstrates omni-modal perception while keeping a compact structure, rapid integration, and immediate data usability. The sensors output ready-to-use, high-fidelity tactile datasets to support advanced dexterous manipulation.
Sanctuary AI's latest video demonstrates robots handling brittle crackers and soft grapes, highlighting precise force control and continuous adjustment for manipulating delicate, irregular objects.
At the 2026 World Robot Sports Games, the first-ever dexterous hand competition showcased the latest progress in robotic manipulation, with no single team dominating. Meanwhile, funding in the dexterous hand sector reached 31.252 billion yuan in the first eight months of 2026, 1.85 times the full-year 2025 figure.
LimX Dynamics demonstrated its TRON 2 robot equipped with Wuji Hand 2 dexterous hands handling traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy work. The robot performs picking, weighing, grinding and packaging of herbs. The omnidirectional base allows the hands to work freely, while precise gripping and dual-arm force control enable mid-air operations. The company highlights this as a step forward in embodied AI through hardware-software synergy.
AGIBOT, a Chinese humanoid robot company, won 7 golds, 4 silvers, and 3 bronzes at the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games' Dexterous Hand Challenges. The team reached the finals in all eight events, including block building, powder weighing, and picking up beans with tweezers.
At WRC 2026, MirrorMe Technology unveiled its full range of self-developed robots, including the world's first dual-mode robot and a dexterous hand that played Beethoven. The company also demonstrated modular quadruped robots and industrial platforms, highlighting its leadership in embodied AI.
China's dexterous hand sector raised RMB 25 billion in H1 2026 yet no standard hand exists: three routes, three 'No. 1' claims, and a $6B valuation target still unclosed.
At WRC 2026, Octopus Dynamics unveiled its 'Brain-Hand-Data' embodied AI system, integrating SYNWorld foundation model, OctoH-Hand dexterous hand, and OctoSense data solution to enable physical AI deployment.
At WRC 2026, BrainCo showcased its brain-controlled robot training platform, dexterous operation data collection matrix, and new-generation bionic hands, demonstrating advances in brain-computer interfaces and embodied AI. The company aims to enable more natural human-robot interaction by translating neural signals into robotic actions.
At the 2026 World Robot Conference, dexterous and bionic hands emerged as the centerpiece, shifting the narrative from flashy stunts to real-world productivity and supply-demand balance.
Unitree has introduced the R1, a seven-axis dexterous robotic arm starting at RMB 9,900. It features 0.1mm repeatability, high-speed joints, and a 2kg payload, with open-source software planned for research and industrial use.
Sales of domestically produced electronic skin are surging as humanoid robots industrialize. One manufacturer reports a 10x sales increase, with the dexterous hand market projected to exceed 430,000 units by 2030.
All 100 officially selected WRC 2026 exhibits, mapped by category: humanoids, quadruped robots, dexterous hands, core components and three industry reads.
A Beijing robotics firm's dexterous hand, featured on CCTV's Spring Festival Gala, exemplifies the industry's growth driven by policy support and market demand. Tax authorities visited the company ahead of the World Robot Conference.
Quadrupeds, arms, exoskeletons and vertical robots at WRC 2026: a complete guide to 50+ non-humanoid machines and the industry structure behind them.
PaXini launched the PXCap Pro five-finger data collection glove for embodied AI. It features omni-modal, multi-source sensing fusion with fingertip and palm tactile arrays, 0.1N tactile force sensitivity, 1% FS repeatability, and a 165° wide-FOV wrist camera that captures hand manipulation and hand-object interaction details.
Daimeng Robotics has secured hundreds of millions of yuan in a new funding round led by Ant Group, with existing shareholders increasing their stakes. The company, known for its tactile dexterous hands, is now pivoting to a broader vision-tactile sensor platform and focusing on tactile world models.
LimX Dynamics releases the core stack of its TRON 2 VLA demo for autonomous clothes folding, including an embodied AI data platform, open datasets, and open-source code. Researchers can now focus on algorithms rather than hardware integration.
LumiBot, a dexterous manipulation startup, secured tens of millions in angel funding led by Changyou Technology, marking the first investment from Changyou's robot fund. The company's focus on thermal management for dexterous hands aims to solve the reliability issues that hinder industrial adoption.
Handroid, a 0.33-meter robot with 27 degrees of freedom, can reconfigure between a walking humanoid and a five-fingered dexterous hand. Developed by UNC Chapel Hill and Stanford, it achieves 72% grasp success and works across both forms.
Lingxin Qiaoshou, a leading dexterous hand maker, has registered a new subsidiary in Hangzhou to strengthen its presence in East China. The move aims to tap into local robotics resources and enhance R&D and supply chain capabilities.
Gemini Robotics 2 from Google DeepMind advances physical AI with full-body control, 22-DOF dexterous hands, and multi-robot collaboration. It also introduces the ASIMOV-Agentic safety benchmark and on-device deployment for low-latency industrial use.