Humanoid
Boston Dynamics has revealed a new hand for its Atlas robot that departs from human-like design, opting instead for a three-finger, one-thumb configuration with 13 degrees of freedom. The company says this arrangement is what its hand needs to do just about everything, framing the design as a deliberate trade-off rather than a limitation.
The development speaks to a persistent challenge in the humanoid sector: building a hand that is simultaneously capable, reliable, and manufacturable. That combination, according to the source, is a very hard problem — one that has pushed robotics teams to weigh biomimicry against practical engineering constraints.
Three fingers and a thumb with 13 degrees of freedom is what Boston Dynamics says its hand needs to do just about everything.
The headline claim is that Atlas’s new hand may outperform human-like designs, suggesting Boston Dynamics believes a non-anthropomorphic configuration can deliver better real-world performance than a five-fingered approach. The 13 degrees of freedom concentrated across four digits indicates a high degree of articulation per finger, though the source does not detail how those degrees of freedom are distributed or what actuation technology drives them.
The source does not specify payload capacity, grip force, tactile sensing, materials, weight, or manufacturing methods for the hand. It also does not state a deployment timeline, pricing, or which tasks Boston Dynamics intends Atlas to perform with the new end effector. No independent performance benchmarks or comparisons against other humanoid hands are provided.
Source: IEEE Spectrum