NEO humanoid robot's new hands bring human-like dexterity closer to reality with force sensing

NEO humanoid's new hands promise human-like dexterity and precision

Norwegian robotics company 1X has unveiled new 25-degree-of-freedom (DOF), tendon-driven hands for its NEO humanoid robot, describing them as a major step toward human-level dexterity. The company said the redesigned hands deliver improvements in precision, strength, safety, and reliability, enabling NEO to perform a much wider range of real-world tasks. By removing hardware limitations on manipulation, 1X aims to make artificial intelligence and training data, rather than physical capability, the primary factor determining what its humanoid robots can accomplish with their hands. Recently, 1X began mass-producing its NEO humanoid robot at a new California factory, advancing the commercialization of home robots designed to assist with daily household tasks safely. 1X has unveiled a new 25-degree-of-freedom (DoF), tendon-driven hand for its NEO humanoid robot, saying the design delivers near-human dexterity, force sensing and durability while overcoming one of the biggest hardware barriers to advanced robotic manipulation. Unlike conventional robotic hands that primarily receive movement commands without accurately sensing forces at their joints, the new NEO hands are fully force-controlled and backdrivable. The company said all 25 DoF -- 22 actuated joints across the fingers and palm, plus three at the wrist -- can both generate movement and measure external forces, allowing the robot to feel contact as it manipulates objects. The hands use 1X's proprietary tendon-drive system with low gear ratios of approximately 5:1 to 15:1, compared with the much higher gear ratios commonly used in robotics. According to the company, this "force transparency" allows contact forces to pass back through the transmission, enabling the robot to detect how hard an object is pushing against its fingers without relying solely on external sensors. Each joint also provides continuous proprioception, enabling the robot to determine the position of every finger and the wrist without depending on cameras. Combined with high-resolution tactile sensors embedded throughout the fingertips and hand surfaces, NEO can measure pressure, contact location and shear forces, helping it detect slipping objects and adjust its grip in real time. "With these hands, NEO crosses a critical threshold. The robot can now do the things humans do with their hands, every day. This is what the industry has been waiting for," said Bernt Børnich, CEO and Founder of 1X, in a blog post. 1X said the hand's human-inspired joint distribution, particularly its opposable thumb, enables a wide range of fine manipulation tasks. Demonstrations show NEO assembling LEGO models, picking up screws and coins, installing light bulbs, using screwdrivers, rotating objects within its hand, zipping jackets, sorting grapes, pouring tea, catching soft balls, plugging in USB-C connectors, holding wine glasses, wiping surfaces and performing sign language. The company also emphasized the hand's combination of precision and strength. The thumb can generate peak torque of 3.5 Nm, while finger joints reach up to 2.6 Nm and fingertip flexion forces up to 45 newtons. The wrist produces 17.75 Nm of torque, supporting tool use, lifting, pushing carts and opening doors. Positioning accuracy is rated at ±0.2 mm, allowing manipulation of small objects common in household and industrial environments. Designed for real-world operation, the hands are IP68 waterproof, constructed from food-safe materials, and capable of washing themselves under running water. Their low-inertia tendon-driven design also improves safety by allowing fingers to yield under unexpected impacts. According to 1X, the hands have been engineered for long-term reliability, with components and finger assemblies tested through millions of operating cycles and wrist joints validated beyond two million cycles under heavy loads. The company said production has already begun on a dedicated manufacturing line capable of producing up to 10,000 hands this year. By manufacturing motors, tendons, electronics, tactile sensors and soft polymer skins entirely in-house, 1X aims to accelerate the development of humanoid robots through large-scale deployment and continuous data collection for embodied AI systems.

Robot surpasses human? Neo's robotic hand dexterity feels scary good right now

I have witnessed many humanoid robots in action through the years and, despite the advancements being made in this field, their movement is mostly reminiscent of hands covered in oven mitts. However, when I came across the press release of the 1X company regarding their robot Neo, I had to give it a pause. According to the specifications, the hand will feature 25 degrees of freedom actuated with tendon-driven movement that the makers claim will allow for near-human level dexterity, strength and reliability. This number is far from unprecedented in robotic industry marketing. The innovation in 1X's case, however, is the way they achieved this result. While typically robots use the strategy of overpowered, high-ratio gearing, which results in their hands being very strong but numb, in this case, the hand operates with much lower gear ratio (between 5-to-1 and 15-to-1) by moving its fingers via tendons, thus turning each joint into both a motor and a sensor. Pressing the finger - it moves. The finger is backdrivable and measures exactly how hard you pressed it. This is what 1X calls "force transparency". Also read: India uses Claude for entrepreneurship work more than rest of the world Compared to the majority of humanoid hands available today, which operate on a 100:1 or 200:1 ratio, that's something entirely different, because at those ratios, friction consumes the contact force before it reaches the motors, and the hand operates blindly from the fingertips, with cameras being attached externally as a way to compensate. The dexterity claim was the part that really caught my attention. According to 1X, Neo hands are capable of assembling LEGO constructions, picking up screws and coins, screwing off a light bulb, using a screwdriver, sorting grapes by colour, and pouring tea without spilling a drop. This is not just another warehouse-grade pick and place task. It is something that robots have been struggling with for many years. Also read: Adidas Trionda: Meet the smart football used at the FIFA World Cup There is one feature of Neo's hands that almost looks domestic in nature: they are sealed up to IP68 standard, so Neo can simply dunk its hands into water without any issues, making it possible for it to wash them after cooking food or getting all covered in peanut butter. This may seem insignificant, but this is the difference between a robot helping in the kitchen and one that creates a mess for others to manage. But I'm not ready to call this "surpassing" of human hands just yet, and 1X has not sent these yet to me. But the narrative which 1X is trying to create, namely, that hands and not legs or body is what makes a humanoid robot actually useful for things such as folding clothes, sweeping and cooking, is tough to dispute after seeing the video. There is also a genuine recognition here of the fact that the hardware has already exceeded what the AI of Neo can actually handle. Robot hands have quietly become the true battleground of humanoid robotics, even before the legs, even before the face, even before the language model layer stack. And if the fingers on Neo perform anything like as well away from a demonstration room as in 1X's videos, the "uncanny valley" debate is going to move from the face to the fingertips.