> Working notes for *Open-Source Humanoid Robotics Landscape (Oct 2026)*, compiled Oct 2, 2026. Not fact-checked line by line: where these notes and the report disagree, trust the report. See README.md. # Open-source dexterous hands, grippers, tactile sensors and hand-data capture: status as of 2026-10-02 ## Read this first: method and source limits - **Pages I could not read.** The WebFetch proxy returned HTTP 429 (rate limit) on these, and I did not retry them by any other route: - robohorizon.com, ORCA Dexterity article (Mar 2026) - arxiv.org/html/2606.14561v1 and alphaxiv 2606.14561.md (I read the PDF instead) - orcahand.com - arxiv.org/abs/2603.26660 (I read the HTML v2 instead) - github.com/leap-hand/LEAP_Hand_API - github.com/pollen-robotics/AmazingHand - ruka-hand-v2.github.io - huggingface.co/blog/pollen-robotics/amazing-hand - leaphand.com - cnx-software.com, Sharpa Wave article - itcanthink.substack.com/p/robot-hands-are-getting-better Two more failures of other kinds: - roboticscenter.ai/store: refused because the shared WebFetch budget (800 calls/hour) ran out (HTTP 403). - humanoid.guide/product/linkerhand-l20: returned 404. Later, the WebSearch budget for the session (200 calls) also ran out. - **GitHub stats.** github.com pages were rate-limited, so I could not take stars from them. Stars, forks, last push and latest default-branch commit date all come from **GitHits package metadata**, which is derived from the GitHub API. The latest-commit date is the Go-module pseudo-version date. All were fetched 2026-10-02, and the tool rounds counts of 1,000 or more (for example "2.4k"). Few of these repos have release tags; where there are none I give the latest commit date. PyPI dates are cross-checks. - **Source tags.** - [WF] = opened with WebFetch today. - [GH] = README, docs or files read from the GitHub repo through GitHits. - [SR] = search-result title only, not opened. - **Prices.** Each price is labelled as vendor, distributor, aggregator (humanoid.guide, robozaps) or cited in a paper. Aggregator and paper figures often disagree, so I give both. - **arXiv licences.** The CC licence shown on arXiv HTML pages is the paper's licence. I did not treat it as the hardware licence. ## Executive summary for a data, simulation or environment startup 1. **Four open hands have real momentum in 2026:** - **ORCA**: ETH spin-off, MIT licence, tactile and joint-encoder variants, LeRobot integration, release 2026-10-01. - **Aero Hand Open**: $314 BOM, MuJoCo model with spatial tendons, claims more than 400k cycles. Its CAD licence is non-commercial. - **RUKA-v2**: NYU, adds a 2-DoF wrist and abduction, about $1.5K. - **The Hugging Face ecosystem**: AmazingHand (2.4k stars) and the HOPEJr hand with a Hall-sensor teleop glove. **LEAP** is still the most-simulated research baseline, but it has slowed (last API push Oct 2025). 2. **Closed hands now set the bar on durability and touch:** - Sharpa Wave: about 1,000 taxels per fingertip, quoted at 1M–2.5M cycles, $50k from a distributor. - Mid-price Chinese hands: Inspire at about $5–6.5k, AgiBot OmniHand at $3,775. Against these, open hands win on hackability and licence, not on price or reliability. 3. **Open tactile infrastructure is fragmented, and Meta's stack is largely archived.** DIGIT design and interface, TACTO and Sparsh are all archived, and Sparsh is non-commercial. Tactile simulation is early: TacSL is "experimental" in Isaac Lab, and Taccel's release is unverified. 4. **Hand-data capture is the weakest link:** - Commercial gloves cost $1.5k–$7.3k or more. - Open gloves and exoskeletons are often non-commercial or gated (HOMIE, AirExo-2, GeoRT), or specific to one hand (DexUMI). - Open dexterous datasets are tiny next to gripper datasets: about 40–100 demos per task, versus FastUMI-100K's 100k trajectories (about 600 h). --- ## 1. Open-source dexterous hands ### LEAP Hand family (v1, v2, v2 Advanced) — CMU's low-cost Dynamixel hand and the de facto research baseline - **Status: SLOWING.** - Last push to leap-hand/LEAP_Hand_API was 2025-10-20. - The last hardware releases were LEAP v2 (RSS 2025) and v2 Advanced (IEEE Humanoids 2025). - I found no 2026 hardware. - The lead designer's site (fetched today) lists him as a final-year PhD student. - **Who.** Kenneth Shaw (CMU Robotics Institute PhD student, designer); Deepak Pathak (CMU, advisor); Ananye Agarwal (v1 co-author). Shaw's site shows no company. Pathak co-founded Skild AI; this is prior knowledge, not verified today. - **Links.** - GitHub: leap-hand/LEAP_Hand_API, leap-hand/LEAP_Hand_Sim - Web: leaphand.com, v2-adv.leaphand.com - Papers: arXiv 2309.06440 (v1, RSS 2023); RSS 2025 demo paper (v2) - **GitHub stats.** - LEAP_Hand_API: 175 stars, 52 forks, last push 2025-10-20. - LEAP_Hand_Sim: 207 stars, 35 forks, last commit 2024-05-18. - **Licence.** - LEAP_Hand_API: GitHub detects a non-standard ("other") licence, so check the terms before commercial use. - LEAP_Hand_Sim: MIT. - MuJoCo Menagerie model: MIT. - Hardware CAD licence: not verified. - **What it is.** - **v1 (2023).** - 16 DoF: three fingers plus a thumb, 4 DoF each, with a "universal" MCP abduction mechanism that keeps all DoF at every flexion angle. - 16 Dynamixel XC330-M288-T servos, direct drive. - $2,000 BOM, under 4 h assembly, 595 g, about 30% larger than a human hand. - Python, ROS and C++ APIs. - **v2 (RSS 2025 demo).** $200, 8 DoF, hybrid rigid-soft, fully 3D-printed, assembled in under 2 h. Software includes MANO and Vision Pro retargeting, Manus-glove teleop, and URDFs for several simulators. - **v2 Advanced (Humanoids 2025).** - 21 DoF driven by 17 motors, including two powered palm articulations. - TPU+PLA multi-material print over a rigid internal structure; PIP and DIP coupled by one tendon. - About $3,000; can be built within a day. - **Adoption.** - It is the comparison baseline in the ORCA, RUKA and RAPID papers. - RAPID Hand is pitched as a LEAP upgrade costing about $360 more. - Simulation coverage: MuJoCo Menagerie (`leap_hand`), a MuJoCo Playground manipulation environment, and dex-urdf. - XELA sells a uSkin kit "For LEAP Hand" [SR]. - I found no units-sold or lab count. - **Benchmarks (v1 paper).** - Pull-out grasp force 19.5 N, versus 8.5 N for Allegro. - Held 2 kg on one fingertip for 1 h with under 0.05 rad error. - Ran 1 h of 5 Hz grasp cycles. Under the same test, "Allegro begins to fail after 15 minutes". - Isaac Gym sim2real blind in-hand cube rotation. - The RUKA paper measured LEAP at 2.45 N pinch and 4.0 kg payload. - The ORCA paper found similar tracking accuracy and under 0.2 s latency, but LEAP motion was jerkier. - **Trade-offs.** - Strengths: the most sim assets and prior work; direct drive with no tendon maintenance; easy to model. - Weaknesses: four fingers; oversized (v1); no tactile or joint sensors beyond the servos; Dynamixel cost. - I found no sign of wide uptake for v2 or v2 Adv. - Pick LEAP v1 to compare against RL and sim2real literature. Pick ORCA or RUKA for a human-sized five-finger hand. - **Sources.** - [WF] ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2309.06440; roboticsproceedings.org/rss21/p132.html; v2-adv.leaphand.com; kennyshaw.net - [GH] Menagerie `leap_hand/README`; mujoco_playground manipulation listing; dex-urdf `robots/hands` listing - [SR] xelarobotics.com/products/for-leap-hand ### ORCA Hand — ETH Zurich tendon-driven 17-DoF hand, now sold by ORCA Dexterity - **Status: ACTIVE.** - orca_core tag v0.5.2 on 2026-10-01; PyPI `orca-core` 0.5.2 on the same day. - Platform paper arXiv 2606.14561 (June 2026). - A product-line launch was reported in March 2026 [SR]. - **Who.** - Soft Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich (PI Robert K. Katzschmann). - v1 authors include Clemens C. Christoph, Maximilian Eberlein, Filippos Katsimalis, Arturo Roberti, Aristotelis Sympetheros, Michel R. Vogt, Davide Liconti, Chenyu Yang, Barnabas G. Cangan and Ronan J. Hinchet. - Spin-off ORCA Dexterity, Inc.: a Delaware corporation with a Zurich team, per an aggregator. - 2026 platform paper: Francesco Capuano (Oxford), Maximilian Eberlein and Fabrice Bourquin (ETH), Clemens C. Christoph (Orca Dexterity). - Funding: not found. - **Links.** - GitHub: orcahand/orca_core, orcahand/orcahand_description - Web: orcahand.com - Papers: arXiv 2504.04259 (v1), 2606.14561 (platform) - **GitHub stats.** orca_core 597 stars, 156 forks, v0.5.2 (2026-10-01). orcahand_description stars were not retrieved. - **Licence.** orca_core is MIT and orcahand_description is MIT; the platform paper says the stack is MIT. This is commercially reusable. - **What it is.** - **v1 (2025).** - 17 DoF: 16 finger joints plus a 1-DoF belt-driven wrist (±60°). Fingers 2–5 have PIP, MCP and abduction; the thumb has IP, MCP, abduction and CMC. - One motor per DoF. Antagonistic 0.4 mm nylon tendons are routed through the joint centres. - "Poppable" joints that dislocate instead of breaking. - Automatic calibration of the tendon transmission ratio. - FSR fingertips giving binary touch. - Under 2,000 CHF in materials; under 8 h assembly. - **v2 (2026).** - orca_core ships configs for `orcahand`, `-joint`, `-touch` and `-full`, left and right. The full config uses joint encoders on all joints. - Motor options (paper): Dynamixel XC330-T288 or XC430-T240BB, or Feetech HL-3915 or HL-3930. - Optional Hall-effect fingertip force/torque sensors: 51 taxels on the thumb and pinky, 83 on the other fingers, 351 in total. - The API returns per-taxel 3-D positions and force vectors in palm or world frames. - **Software.** LeRobot-native; MuJoCo models and tasks (URDF and MJCF for v1 and v2); teleop through Meta Quest 3, MediaPipe or Manus (40–50 fps). - **Prices.** - Platform paper: "ca. $3k". RUKA-v2 table: about $3.5K. - Aggregator robozaps (marked "verified 2026-07-31"): | Variant | Actuators | Price | |---|---|---| | Assembled base | Feetech | $3,500 | | Assembled base | Dynamixel | $4,500 | | Touch | Feetech | $6,100 | | Touch | Dynamixel | $7,100 | | "Lite" (self-build, coupled tendons) | — | about $900 BOM | Weight 1.1 kg (base), about 1.25 kg (Touch). - A March 2026 headline said "3 open-source robotic hands, starting at $1,500" [SR]. - Distributor SVRC lists Feetech STS3215 ×17, which conflicts with the paper. - **Adoption.** No count of units or labs is published. 597 stars, a Discord community, and listings at distributors and aggregators. - **Benchmarks.** - **v1 durability:** 2,250+ grasp cycles in 2.5 h without failure; an autonomous imitation-learning run of 7 h 17 min (about 2,000 grasps) with no hardware intervention. - **v1 task results:** pick-place IL about 90% (estimated from a figure); zero-shot sim2real ball reorientation after 1 h of IsaacGym training (4,096 environments). - **v1 wear:** tactile skin degraded after 2,000–4,000 cycles, and sensor wires snapped at 4,500–7,000 cycles. - **v2:** 5 h continuous (about 3,500 cycles) with no thermal cutoff and no actuator or transmission failure; learned in-hand reorientation succeeded 9/10. - **Trade-offs.** - Strengths: human-sized five fingers plus a wrist; MIT licence; a live company; tactile and encoder options. - Weaknesses: tendons need tensioning and calibration; heavier than LEAP; durability is shown in hours and thousands of cycles, not millions; I found no public simulation model of its tactile sensors. - **Sources.** - [WF] arxiv.org/html/2504.04259v2; arxiv.org/pdf/2606.14561; robozaps.com/products/orca-hand; roboticscenter.ai/hardware/orca-hand - [GH] orca_core README, `tactile-frames.md`, `v2/orcahand-full-right/config.yaml`, models listing; orcahand_description README and LICENSE - [SR] robohorizon headline (Mar 2026); Rowan Cheung post on X ### RUKA and RUKA-v2 — NYU's human-sized tendon hand with learned controllers - **Status: ACTIVE.** RUKA-v2 paper arXiv 2603.26660 (v2 dated 2026-03-30). The v1 repo's latest commit is 2025-08-11. - **Who.** Lerrel Pinto's lab at NYU. - v1: Anya Zorin and Irmak Guzey (co-first authors), Billy Yan, Aadhithya Iyer, Lisa Kondrich, Nikhil X. Bhattasali, Lerrel Pinto. - v2: Xinqi (Lucas) Liu, Ruoxi Hu, Alejandro Ojeda Olarte, Zhuoran Chen, Kenny Ma, Charles Cheng Ji, Lerrel Pinto, Raunaq Bhirangi, Irmak Guzey. - **Links.** - GitHub: ruka-hand/RUKA - Web: ruka-hand.github.io, ruka-hand-v2.github.io - Papers: arXiv 2504.13165 (v1), 2603.26660 (v2) - Data and controller weights: OSF - **GitHub stats.** ruka-hand/RUKA 199 stars, 29 forks, latest commit 2025-08-11. I did not find a separate v2 code repo. - **Licence.** The RUKA repo is MIT. The v2 hardware licence is not verified. - **What it is.** - **v1.** - 15 DoF driven by 11 actuators: the thumb has 3 Dynamixel XM430-W210-T; each finger has 2 XL330-M288-T, with PIP and DIP coupled. - Actuators sit in the forearm; tendons are 200-lb braided line in PTFE tubes. Human-sized. - No joint encoders. Per-finger LSTM controllers are learned from MANUS-glove motion capture. - BOM under $1,300 (alternative motor configurations at $500 and $900). About 7 h assembly; most repairs under 20 min. MuJoCo model. - **v2.** - 20 total DoF, 16 actuated: 18 hand DoF including per-finger abduction (spring return), plus a 2-DoF wrist. - Optional AS5600 12-bit magnetic joint encoders and optional eFlesh fingertips. - About $1.5K. - **Benchmarks.** - **v1:** pinch 2.74 N; payload 6.0 kg; ran 20 h continuously without a significant drop in precision; 29/33 grasps of the GRASP taxonomy; Kapandji 10/10. - **v2 static holds:** DIP-PIP 1.2 kg for 15 s; MCP 0.78 kg; thumb 0.835 kg for 20 s; wrist 1.215 kg. - **v2 thermal:** 5 h with no shutdown; the thumb settled at 46.97 °C. - **v2 versus v1 in teleop:** completion time down 51.3%, success up 21.2%. - **v2 tasks:** 13 teleoperated tasks; about 100 demos per learned task; average controller error 8.26°. - **Comparisons.** RUKA-v2's Table 1 is the best cross-hand table found: | Hand | Cost | DoF / actuated | Durability | |---|---|---|---| | RUKA-v2 | \~$1.5K | 20/16 | >5 h | | ORCA | \~$3.5K | 17/17 | >10K cycles | | Allegro V4 | \~$16K | 16/16 | — | | Wuji | \~$5.5K | 20/20 | \~40 min | | Sharpa Wave | \~$50K | 22/22 | >2.5M cycles | - **Trade-offs.** - Strengths: the cheapest human-sized hand with a wrist; high payload. - Weaknesses: no encoders by default. The README says teleop works better with MANUS gloves because the controllers were trained on MANUS data, which ties you to a glove costing over $5k. Tendon tension varies from build to build. - **Sources.** - [WF] arxiv.org/html/2504.13165v1; arxiv.org/html/2603.26660v2 - [GH] RUKA README ### Aero Hand Open — Chestnut Robotics' (formerly TetherIA) $314 tendon hand with 7 actuators - **Status: ACTIVE.** - Latest commit 2026-09-15. - Paper arXiv 2608.28578 (Aug 2026). - Firmware 0.2.0 and a ROS2 release on 2026-02-25. - **Who.** Chestnut Robotics, Inc. (formerly TetherIA, Inc.). Authors: Nan Wang, Mohit Yadav, Jonathan Wulff, Aidan Rosenbaum, Kezhou Chen, Yuvan Sharma, Xu Dong, Yiwei Tao. - **Links.** - GitHub: Chestnut-Robotics/aero-hand-open; SDK tetheria/aero-open-sdk (PyPI 0.1.0.dev1) - Web: docs.tetheria.ai, shop.tetheria.ai - **GitHub stats.** 976 stars, 154 forks, latest commit 2026-09-15. - **Licence: partially open.** - Firmware and SDK: Apache-2.0. - CAD, STL, BOM and docs: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (non-commercial). - Commercial cloning or making parts needs a licence. - Units you buy may be integrated into commercial products. - **What it is.** - 5 fingers, 16 joints, 7 actuated DoF: underactuated fingers and a thumb with 3-way coupling. - 7 Feetech HLS3606M coreless servos, about 0.59 N·m stall. - Kevlar/Vectran cables on 9 mm spools with music-wire return springs. - PLA print, about 13 h. ESP32-S3, USB-C, 6 V. - Weight 374 g (paper) or 389 g (README); 198×95×53.5 mm. - Proprioception from motor encoders only. - **Simulation:** MuJoCo model with 20 spatial tendons plus a 7-equation actuation map. Merged into MuJoCo Playground (2025-11-25) and Menagerie. - **Teleop:** ROS2 Humble; Manus (Oct 2025), webcam (Dec 2025), Apple Vision Pro (Jan 2026). - **Prices.** Kit BOM $314 (README). Assembled $720 (shop, today), shipping in under 5 days. - **Benchmarks (self-reported).** - About 12 N fingertip force (the shop page says about 10 N). - About 1.2 Hz open/close. - More than 400,000 full-actuation cycles without cable failure (90+ h). - All 33 GRASP-taxonomy grasps. - Zero-shot sim-to-real. - **Adoption.** 976 stars; adopted into DeepMind's simulation assets. No sales numbers. - **Trade-offs.** - Strengths: the cheapest credible hand, with a validated tendon simulation model. - Weaknesses: only 7 actuators; low force; non-commercial CAD. Release notes show recurring maintenance work: overheat protection, a derailment fix, and a homing change that broke backward compatibility. - **Sources.** - [WF] arxiv.org/html/2608.28578v1; shop.tetheria.ai/products/aero-hand-open - [GH] README, `RELEASE_NOTES.md`; Menagerie listing - [SR] "TetherIA launches $314…" ### AmazingHand — Pollen Robotics / Hugging Face four-finger hand for under $200 - **Status: ACTIVE (borderline).** Latest commit 2026-04-03; last push 2026-04-23. - **Who.** Pollen Robotics (France), acquired by Hugging Face in April 2025 per Gigazine. The design is inspired by the ILDA hand. - **Links.** GitHub pollen-robotics/AmazingHand; Hugging Face blog; Seeed wiki. - **GitHub stats.** 2.4k stars, 280 forks. - **Licence.** Code Apache-2.0; mechanical design CC BY 4.0 (per the Seeed wiki). - **What it is.** - 4 fingers × 2 DoF (flexion/extension and abduction/adduction, from two parallel servos) = 8 DoF. - 8 Feetech SCS0009 micro servos. - About 400 g; printed rigid "bones" with TPU shells. - Control from Python over serial, or from an Arduino with a bus-servo driver. - BOM "less than $200" (Hugging Face blog title [SR]). - Force, durability and simulation model were not published in anything I read. - **Adoption.** The most-starred open hand repo in this slice; Gitee mirrors; a MakerWorld listing. - **Trade-offs.** Strengths: cheapest, easiest to build, permissive licences. Weaknesses: micro-servo forces, 4 fingers, no tactile sensing. Suited to education and human-robot-interaction work. - **Sources.** - [WF] wiki.seeedstudio.com/hand_amazinghand; gigazine (HopeJR article, for the acquisition context) - [SR] Hugging Face blog title; Gigazine 2025-07-18 title ### HOPEJr hand — The Robot Studio and Hugging Face hand and arm with a Hall-sensor teleop exoskeleton - **Status: ACTIVE.** Latest commit 2026-05-04. LeRobot ships drivers for the `hope_jr` hand and arm and the `homunculus_glove` and exoskeleton. - **Who.** Rob Knight (The Robot Studio, original design). Martino Russi (Hugging Face) did the 2025 redesign and the LeRobot integration. - **Links.** GitHub TheRobotStudio/HOPEJr and nepyope/Project-Homunculus; LeRobot `docs/source/hope_jr.mdx`. - **GitHub stats.** 831 stars, 101 forks. - **Licence.** There is no LICENSE file at the repo root and GitHub detects none, so reuse rights are unclear. - **What it is.** - 16 Feetech SCS0009 servos. The thumb has CMC, MCP, PIP and DIP. Each finger has a radial flexor, an ulnar flexor and coupled PIP/DIP. - Tendons are 0.33 mm, 63-lb line with PTFE guides and linearising spools; underactuated DIP; opposable thumb. - The exoskeleton and glove use SS49E Hall sensors, one per hand joint, on no-solder PCBs. - The full humanoid has 66 DoF and a target price of about $3,000 (Hugging Face, May 2025). The first few units were to ship by end-2025; actual shipping is not verified. - **Trade-offs.** Strengths: the cheapest full arm, hand and teleop stack, LeRobot-native. Weaknesses: low force; unclear licence; no benchmarks. - **Sources.** - [WF] gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20250530-hugging-face-humanoid-robot - [GH] README, `Arm/README.md`, `Arm/BOM.md`, `Arm/ChangeLog`; LeRobot `hope_jr.mdx` ### "DexHand" — three different projects share the name - **DexHand V1.0 (dexhand.org): DORMANT.** - Designed by Rob Knight (The Robot Studio) and released as open source. Trent Shumay (IoT Design Shop) maintained the site, ROS 2 and BLE software. - The site's latest news is dated 2023-10-01. - Repos: - TheRobotStudio/V1.0-Dexhand: 577 stars, 101 forks, latest commit 2024-07-26. - iotdesignshop/dexhand_ros2_meta: 58 stars, 2024-06-30. - iotdesignshop/dexhand_description: 19 stars. - The ORCA authors call it "challenging to assemble" with no demonstrated real-world applicability. Specs not verified. - **BiDexHand (Northwestern, Zhengyang Kris Weng; arXiv 2504.14712, v2 Oct 2025): SLOWING.** - Repo wengmister/BiDexHand: 257 stars, MIT, latest commit 2025-11-23. - 16 actuated DoF over 21 joints. N-configuration tendon routing, plus anti-parallelogram DIP–PIP linkages. - 2.14 N average peak fingertip force; lifts a 4.54 kg dumbbell; 33/33 GRASP grasps; Kapandji 9/11. - **DexRobot "DexHand021 Pro".** A commercial 22-DoF hand [SR press-release title]. I could not verify any open hardware. - **Sources.** [WF] dexhand.org; arxiv.org/html/2504.14712v1 ### InMoov hand — Gael Langevin's hobbyist tendon hand: SLOWING/DORMANT - The tutorial page was last modified 2024-01-26. It recommends a successor, the "i2Hand", and has 458+ comment threads going back to 2014. - 5 finger servos plus a wrist servo; braided 200-lb line. - From the RUKA table: about $100, 14 DoF with 5 actuated, pinch 2.72 N, payload 3.2 kg. - Licence is non-commercial CC BY-NC (prior knowledge; not stated on the page I fetched). - Fine for education; not a manipulation-research platform. - **Sources.** [WF] inmoov.fr/hand-and-forarm ### Yale OpenHand — DORMANT - Models: T, T42, O (commercialized by RightHand Robotics), Q, VF, W, M2, Stewart, Sphinx and F3. - Licence CC BY-NC 3.0. - grablab/openhand_node: 13 stars, MIT, latest commit 2022-02-10. - Underactuated tendon and flexure grippers. Still useful as gripper designs, but not humanoid hands. - **Sources.** [WF] eng.yale.edu/grablab/openhand ### Pisa/IIT SoftHand (Natural Machine Motion Initiative) — DORMANT open CAD with a commercial descendant - One motor drives 19 DoF through soft synergies. - CAD is on SourceForge under CC BY 4.0. - The commercial qb SoftHand2 is listed at $16,500 (aggregator). - Robust power grasping; no in-hand dexterity. - **Sources.** [WF] naturalmachinemotioninitiative.com/softhand; humanoid.guide (Wuji page list) ### Brunel Hand (Open Bionics) and Will Cogley's designs — not verified this pass - Will Cogley's Notion site is JavaScript-only and returned nothing. - From prior knowledge: the Brunel Hand 2.0 is an older CC BY-SA design that is likely DORMANT or DISCONTINUED. Will Cogley publishes maker and YouTube biomimetic designs. ### ISyHand (MPI-IS) — European open hand with an articulated palm - Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Stuttgart) and the University of Augsburg: Benjamin A. Richardson, Felix Grüninger, Lukas Mack, Jörg Stückler, Katherine J. Kuchenbecker. - Presented at Humanoids 2025. - Dynamixel servos on the joints; about $1,300 in materials; 4 h assembly; Isaac simulation. - In RL cube reorientation it outperforms comparable hands early in training and beats its own fixed-palm version. - Repo names and stars not retrieved. Status: SLOWING or unverified. - **Sources.** [WF] isyhand.is.mpg.de; arXiv 2509.26236 ### RAPID Hand (Sun Yat-sen University, UC Merced, CASIA; NeurIPS 2025) - 20 DoF, fully actuated by 20 Dynamixel servos. 1.148 kg. About $3,500, of which the motors are about $1,800. - 96 piezoresistive taxels per fingertip (480 total); Orbbec wrist RGB-D camera; sensor sync within 7 ms at 25 Hz; up to 7 N fingertip force. - Results: rolling 50/50, translation 50/50, retrieval 24/50. - Its comparison table lists Inspire at about $5,000. - The paper says hardware will be released; release status unverified. - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/html/2506.07490v1 ### Closed comparators (prices with source type; date of fetch 2026-10-02 unless noted) - **Sharpa Wave.** - $50,000 from distributor RoboticsCenter: "in stock", 4–6 weeks. - 22 active DoF; 0.8 kg; 20 N fingertip; 40 kg payload; more than 1,000 taxels per fingertip at 180 Hz; "2,500,000 cycles". - A December 2025 news item says rolling mass production began in October 2025, with a "one-million-cycle durability certification", 0.005 N sensitivity, and a CES 2026 Innovation Award. - Open URDF/USD/XML in sharpa-robotics/sharpa-urdf-usd-xml (24 stars, tag v4.0.0 2026-03-31). - MuJoCo Menagerie model added 2026-05-18. - The orca platform paper puts Sharpa at about $50k. - **Allegro (Wonik).** V4 about $16K (RUKA-v2 paper; the LEAP paper says $16,000+). V5 Sense $13,000 (distributor). V5 got CE certification in May 2025 [SR]. Menagerie model available. - **Shadow Dexterous Hand.** About $60k (orca 2026 paper), more than 100,000 CHF (ORCA v1 paper), or $100,000 (RUKA table, 22 DoF with 20 actuated). DEX-EE $60,000 (aggregator). Menagerie models for both. - **Inspire RH56DFX.** About $5,000 (RAPID paper), $6,500 (aggregator), or "RH56 series" $10,500 (aggregator). 6 active DoF; 0.54 kg (aggregator). - **PSYONIC Ability Hand.** $20,000 (aggregator). 6 actuators, 30 touch sensors (aggregator); 490 g and IP64 (vendor). Repo psyonicinc/ability-hand-api: 53 stars, MIT, last push 2026-05-18. - **Unitree Dex3-1** (vendor page). 3 fingers, 7 DoF, 33 tactile sensors, 710 g, 500 g maximum payload. No price listed. - **Unitree Dex5-1** (vendor page). 20 DoF (16 active plus 4), 1,100 g, 10 N fingertip, 3.5–4.5 kg payload. The Dex5-1P variant has 94 tactile sensors. No price listed. - **Wuji Hand.** 20 active DoF, direct drive. About $5.5K (RUKA-v2) versus $16,000 (aggregator). "300,000+ grasp cycles" (aggregator) versus about 40 min thermal endurance (RUKA-v2). - **Robotera XHand1.** 12 active DoF, fully actuated (DexUMI paper). $14,000 and 1.1 kg (aggregator). - **Tesollo DG-5F.** 20 DoF, 1.76 kg, $21,000 (aggregator). - **Others listed by distributor or aggregator.** AgiBot OmniHand $3,775 and OmniHand Pro $14,610 (distributor); ROBOTIS HX5-D20 $5,500 (aggregator); SCHUNK SVH $30,000 (aggregator); Agile Hand $42,000 (distributor). - **LinkerHand.** Not verified (the aggregator page was 404). - **Sources.** [WF] roboticscenter.ai/store/product/sharpa-wave-right; letsdatascience.com Sharpa news; humanoid.guide pages for wuji-hand, xhand1, dg-5f, ability-hand, rh56dfx and leap-hand; unitree.com/Dex3-1 and /Dex5-1; psyonic.io/ability-hand. [GH] Menagerie `sharpa_wave` README and CHANGELOG. --- ## 2. Grippers and handheld capture grippers ### UMI (Universal Manipulation Interface) — handheld GoPro gripper for in-the-wild demos - **Status: ACTIVE (maintenance).** Latest commit 2026-05-26. - **Who.** Shuran Song's REAL lab (Columbia, now Stanford). Co-author list (Cheng Chi et al., with TRI) is from prior knowledge. - **Links.** real-stanford/universal_manipulation_interface; arXiv 2402.10329. - **GitHub stats.** 1.5k stars, 290 forks. - **Licence.** MIT. - **What it is.** - GoPro with a 155° fisheye lens and side mirrors for implicit stereo; IMU-aided ORB-SLAM3. - Soft fingers carrying fiducial markers to track gripper width. - 780 g; 310×175×210 mm; 80 mm stroke. - BOM $73 for the printed gripper plus $298 for the GoPro and accessories. - Menagerie has a `umi_gripper` model. - **Benchmarks.** - More than 3× faster than teleop on cup arrangement. - Policies: cups 20/20, dynamic tossing 105/120, cloth folding 14/20, dish washing 14/20. - In the wild 43/60 (71.7%); cross-robot 18/20. - **Derivatives.** - umi-on-legs: 548 stars; the default branch has not changed since 2024-08-29, but there was a push on 2026-07-20. - Also FastUMI, DexUMI, and exUMI (CoRL 2025). - **Trade-offs.** The cheapest scalable demo device and hardware-agnostic, but parallel-jaw only. Its SLAM pipeline is fragile and depends on the GoPro and its firmware. - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/html/2402.10329v3. [GH] README (grep). ### FastUMI / FastUMI-100K (Shanghai AI Lab) - **Status: ACTIVE.** Repo MrKeee/FastUMI-100K: 58 stars, Apache-2.0, last push 2026-06-08. - **Who.** Kehui Liu and Bin Zhao (Shanghai AI Lab), with Northwestern Polytechnical University, SJTU and others. - **What it is.** A hardware-decoupled handheld gripper with plug-and-play fingertips. RealSense T265 for 6-DoF pose (200 Hz) plus a GoPro fisheye (60 Hz), synchronised at 20 Hz. - **Dataset.** More than 100,000 trajectories (about 600 h) across 54 task categories, with 15,000 text annotations. - **Results.** π0 fine-tuning reaches 73–100% on short-horizon tasks; transfer between xArm6 and Flexiv Rizon4 without fine-tuning. - A "FastUMIPro" Hugging Face org exists [SR]; its commercial status is unverified. - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/html/2510.08022v1 ### Pollen PincOpen - **Status: ACTIVE.** Latest commit 2026-06-16; 169 stars. - **Licence.** CC BY-SA 4.0. - **What it is.** A parallel gripper with a BOM of about €25, using a Feetech STS3215. It is a printable derivative of Reachy 2's "Pincette" gripper (BOM about €1,700) and fits the SO-ARM100. - **Community.** A ROS2 driver from Christopher Newport University; a MuJoCo pull request; an ICRA 2026 workshop with Melexis 3D force sensing; LeKiwi integration. - **Sources.** [GH] README ### SO-101 gripper (The Robot Studio + Hugging Face) - **Status: ACTIVE.** Last push 2026-09-23. - TheRobotStudio/SO-ARM100: 7.6k stars, 708 forks, Apache-2.0. - A 1-DoF jaw on an STS3215 servo. Kits from about 8 vendors: RobotEd, Robonine, PartaBot, ForgeMotion, Seeed, WowRobo, Autodiscovery and Phospho. - Menagerie models: `robotstudio_so101` and `trs_so_arm100`. - The default entry gripper for LeRobot users. - **Sources.** [GH] README (grep); Menagerie listing. ### ALOHA gripper - **Status: DORMANT** for the original repo: tonyzhaozh/aloha, 2.3k stars, MIT, latest commit 2024-04-19. - Menagerie and Playground include ALOHA models. - Commercial ALOHA 2 and Trossen kits continue (not verified). - GELLO (arm teleop) is active: wuphilipp/gello_software, 551 stars, 2026-09-14. --- ## 3. Tactile sensors and tactile simulation ### DIGIT (Meta, original) — DISCONTINUED as an open project - Both repos are archived: - facebookresearch/digit-design: 216 stars. - facebookresearch/digit-interface: 93 stars; last release 0.2.1 on 2021-09-22. - Commercial DIGIT through GelSight: unverified. ### Digit 360 (Meta FAIR + GelSight) — multimodal fingertip - **Status: DORMANT (repo).** Latest commit 2025-07-22. - **GitHub stats.** facebookresearch/digit360: 264 stars, 21 forks. - **Licence.** Custom ("other"). - **Who.** Mike Lambeta, Tingfan Wu, …, Jitendra Malik, Roberto Calandra. - **What it is.** - About 8.3 million taxels (README). - 18+ sensing modalities, 7 µm features, 1 mN force (digit.ml). - On-device processing; ROS2 interface; meshes for Isaac Sim. - **Availability.** Free units offered to researchers through a call for proposals with GelSight. Commercial price not found. - **Sources.** [GH] README. [WF] digit.ml. ### Sparsh (Meta FAIR) — tactile foundation encoders: DISCONTINUED (repo archived) - facebookresearch/sparsh: 227 stars, archived; last push 2025-02-27. - **Licence.** CC BY-NC 4.0 (non-commercial). - Self-supervised training on 460k+ tactile images. - TacBench: 6 tasks. Sparsh is reported +95.1% on average over task- and sensor-specific end-to-end models (Oct 2024). - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/abs/2410.24090. [GH] LICENSE.md. ### ReSkin (CMU + Meta) - **Status: DORMANT.** raunaqbhirangi/reskin_sensor: 134 stars, MIT, last push 2023-06-01. - Magnetic skin whose electronics are separate from a replaceable elastomer. - **Sources.** [WF] reskin.dev ### AnySkin (NYU, CMU, Columbia, Meta) - **Status: DORMANT (library), but sold.** `anyskin` 1.0.0 on 2024-10-21; repo 87 stars, MIT. - Commercial units through WowRobo. - 92% slip detection. First demonstration that learned policies transfer when the skin is swapped. - The README says readings drift and must be re-zeroed. - **Sources.** [WF] any-skin.github.io. [GH] README. ### eFlesh (NYU) - **Status: SLOWING.** notvenky/eFlesh: 384 stars, MIT, last push 2025-10-28. - TPU-printed cut-cell microstructures with magnets and the ReSkin/AnySkin magnetometer boards. - More than 90% average success on 4 visuo-tactile tasks. - An optional fingertip on RUKA-v2. - **Sources.** [GH] README ### 9DTact / DTact - **9DTact: ACTIVE.** linchangyi1/9DTact: 191 stars, MIT, last commit 2026-08-21. The README says commercial use is explicitly welcome. - Compact vision-based sensor for 3-D shape and 6-D force. - The README lists 16 "DTact series" papers from 2023 to 2026, including 2026 work on a low-cost tactile gripper, SpikingTac, ViHaTeleop and a heterogeneous tactile transformer. - **DTact: DORMANT.** 21 stars, 2023. - **Sources.** [GH] README ### GelSlim 4.0 (MMint Lab, University of Michigan) - Open design, code and data that build on GelSlim 3.0 (arXiv 2409.19770). - Activity and stars unverified. ### Evetac (TU Darmstadt group; IEEE T-RO) - Event camera instead of RGB; 1,000 Hz online processing; senses vibration up to 498 Hz; shear and slip. - Open design on sites.google.com/view/evetac. - Activity unverified. ### GelSight Mini (closed comparator) - The vendor page lists no price ("request quote" or product sheet). About $500 at its 2022 launch is prior knowledge and unverified. - SDK gelsightinc/gsrobotics: 206 stars, GPL-3.0, last push 2025-06-25. ### TacSL in Isaac Lab (NVIDIA) - **Status: ACTIVE.** Isaac Lab: 8.2k stars, BSD-3, pushed 2026-10-02. - An *experimental* visuo-tactile sensor based on TacSL (Akinola, Xu, Carius, Fox, Narang; T-RO 2025) and the Taxim renderer. - Outputs tactile RGB, depth, normal force and shear force. - The examples are built on the GelSight R1.5, "a prototype sensor that is now discontinued". - **Sources.** [GH] IsaacLab `docs/experimental-features/visuo_tactile_sensor.rst`, `isaaclab_contrib` README. ### Taccel (Peking University, BIGAI, UCLA; NeurIPS 2025) - Combines IPC and ABD solvers. - Peg insertion: 915 FPS across 4,096 environments on an H100, about 18× real time. - Dexterous hands: 12.67 FPS across 256 environments; 64× faster than SAPIEN-IPC. - Sim-to-real classification: 86.5% on synthetic data, 70.94% on real. - The paper says "will release"; release not verified. - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/html/2504.12908v2 ### Older tactile simulators - TACTO: facebookresearch/tacto, 472 stars, **archived**. - DiffTactile: Genesis-Embodied-AI/DiffTactile, 316 stars, latest commit 2024-03 (DORMANT). --- ## 4. Hand-data capture: gloves, exoskeletons and retargeting ### DexUMI (Stanford, Columbia, J.P. Morgan AI Research, CMU, NVIDIA; CoRL 2025 Best Paper finalist) - **Status: ACTIVE.** Latest commit 2026-04-18. - **GitHub stats.** real-stanford/DexUMI: 266 stars, MIT. - **Who.** Mengda Xu and Han Zhang (equal contribution), Yifan Hou, Zhenjia Xu, Linxi Fan, Manuela Veloso, Shuran Song. - **What it is.** - A wearable exoskeleton designed per target hand: Inspire (6 active DoF) and XHand (12 active DoF). - Alps encoders; iPhone ARKit (Record3D) for wrist pose; OAK-1 150° camera. - FSR or electromagnetic tactile sensors. - SAM2 and ProPainter remove the human and exoskeleton from images and render the robot hand in their place. - **Results.** 3.2× more efficient than teleop; 86% average success over four tasks. - **Authors' stated limitations.** Each new hand needs its own exoskeleton. FSRs are "sensitive to attachment", and electromagnetic sensors drift after high pressure. Backlash and printed-part flex limit accuracy. - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/html/2505.21864v2. [GH] README. ### DOGlove (Tsinghua TEA Lab, Shanghai Qi Zhi, Shanghai AI Lab; RSS 2025) - **Status: ACTIVE (borderline).** Latest commit 2026-04-18. - **GitHub stats.** TEA-Lab/DOGlove: 140 stars, MIT. - **What it is.** - Under $600; under 6 h assembly; 550 g. - 21-DoF motion capture from 16 Alps encoders. - 5-DoF cable force feedback from Dynamixel XC/XL330 servos. - 5 fingertip linear resonant actuators for haptics. - Up to 120 Hz; ±1° after calibration. - **Benchmarks.** With haptics and force feedback: 10/10 on in-hand rotation, versus 1/10 for AnyTeleop. - **Comparison.** The paper puts Manus and SenseGlove each above $5,000. - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/html/2502.07730v1. [GH] README. ### HOMIE / OpenHomie (Shanghai AI Lab + CUHK; RSS 2025) - **Status: ACTIVE.** Last push 2026-09-08. A 2026-07 news item points to a HOMIE v2 RL policy in NVlabs' GR00T whole-body-control repo. - **GitHub stats.** InternRobotics/OpenHomie: 619 stars. - **What it is.** About $500 of hardware in total: - Isomorphic 7-DoF exoskeleton arms on XL330-M288-T servos. - Hall-sensor gloves with 15 DoF each. - A foot pedal for locomotion. - Targets the Unitree G1 with Dex3 hands. - **Licence.** Hardware files require a form with a real name and institution, and the README says "strictly forbidden to use HOMIE for any commercial purposes". - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/html/2502.13013v2. [GH] README. ### DexCap (Stanford) - **Status: DORMANT.** Last push 2024-10-10. - **GitHub stats.** j96w/DexCap: 421 stars, MIT. - Rokoko electromagnetic-field (EMF) motion-capture gloves plus SLAM and 3-D observation; the DexIL learning method. - Depends on a commercial glove. - **Sources.** [WF] arxiv.org/abs/2403.07788. [GH] README. ### AirExo-2 (AirExo team, Hongjie Fang et al.; SJTU per prior knowledge) - **Status: ACTIVE (light).** Last push 2026-04-03; README news stops at June 2025. - **GitHub stats.** 43 stars. - **Licence.** CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 covering hardware, code and data. - Arm exoskeletons for Flexiv Rizon 4 arms with Robotiq 2F-85 grippers, so not dexterous hands. - **Sources.** [GH] README ### Homunculus glove and exoskeleton (Hugging Face / nepyope) - **Status: ACTIVE.** Latest commit 2026-09-23. - **GitHub stats.** 46 stars; no licence detected. - SS49E Hall sensors; the `homunculus_glove` teleop type in LeRobot. ### Retargeting - **dex-retargeting.** dexsuite: 1.2k stars, MIT, v0.5.0 on 2025-04-05, last push 2025-08-21. **DORMANT** by the 12-month rule, but stable and widely used. - **GeoRT (Meta).** 231 stars, **CC BY-NC 4.0**, last push 2025-09-02. A neural retargeter that trains in 1–2 min. - **dex-urdf.** 383 stars, MIT, last push 2025-08-17. URDFs for the Ability, Allegro, Barrett, D'Claw, Inspire, LEAP, Panda, Schunk and Shadow hands, but not ORCA, RUKA, Aero or XHand. - **VR teleop stacks.** - unitreerobotics/xr_teleoperate: 1.6k stars, active 2026-09-07. - OpenTeleVision/TeleVision: 1.3k stars, 2024. - Dingry/BunnyVisionPro: 359 stars. ### Closed gloves - **Rokoko Smartgloves.** $1,495 (vendor). Hybrid IMU and EMF tracking, 7 sensors per glove, 100 fps. - **Manus Metagloves Pro.** Quote only (vendor). EMF tracking, 25 DoF. The DOGlove paper puts it above $5,000. RUKA, ORCA, LEAP v2 and Aero all support Manus teleop. - **SenseGlove Nova 2.** Listed at $7,299 excluding VAT and at €3,999 excluding VAT "for small quantities"; it is unclear whether these are per glove or per pair. 4 magnetic friction brakes up to 20 N; vibrotactile feedback on thumb and index. - **StretchSense.** Not verified. - **Sources.** [WF] rokoko.com/products/smartgloves; manus-meta.com/products/metagloves-pro; senseglove.com/product/nova-2 --- ## 5. Also notable (brief) - **Tactile SoftHand-A** (Bristol; arXiv 2406.12731): tactile, highly underactuated, 3D-printed hand. [SR] Status unverified. - **"Affordable, fully-actuated biomimetic hand"** (arXiv 2510.16931): [SR] Unverified. - **HRI Hand** (HardwareX; MrLacquer/HRI-hand-firmware): [SR] Likely DORMANT. - **CDF-Glove** (arXiv 2603.05804, Mar 2026): cable-driven force-feedback glove. [SR] Open status unknown. - **Glovity** (arXiv 2510.09229): wrench-feedback teleop. [SR] - **ViHaTeleop** (arXiv 2608.16572, 2026): low-cost visual-haptic teleop built on 9DTact. [GH, 9DTact README] - **Universal Manipulation Exoskeleton** (arXiv 2606.14218) and **ExoGS** (arXiv 2601.18629, real-to-sim-to-real from exoskeleton data). [SR] - **THETA** (arXiv 2601.07768): hand-state estimation for teleop. [SR] - **Dexora** (arXiv 2605.18722): open VLA for high-DoF bimanual hands, a consumer of hand data. [SR] - **DexWild** (CMU; dexwild/dexwild): 46 stars, MIT, latest commit 2025-08-14. DORMANT. - **MuJoCo Menagerie**: 4.1k stars, Apache-2.0. Became a pip package `mujoco-menagerie` in Sept 2026 (2026.9.4 on 2026-09-28). ACTIVE. - **MuJoCo Playground**: 2.2k stars. Includes LEAP and Aero hand environments. ACTIVE. - **LeRobot**: 27k stars, 0.6.1 on 2026-08-03. The integration hub for ORCA, HopeJR, PincOpen and SO-101. ACTIVE. --- ## 6. Comparison tables **Open hands (plus key closed comparators)** | Hand | Fingers; DoF total/actuated | Actuation | Weight | Force / payload | Durability evidence | Cost | Sensors | Sim | License | Status | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | LEAP v1 | 4; 16/16 | Direct servo (XC330) | 595 g | 19.5 N pull-out; 4.0 kg (RUKA test) | 1 h at 2 kg; 1 h at 5 Hz | $2,000 BOM | Servo only | MuJoCo, Playground, IsaacGym, URDF | API "other"; sim MIT | SLOWING | | LEAP v2 / v2 Adv | — ; 8 / 21 with 17 motors | Servo + tendon (Adv) | n/a | n/a | n/a | $200 / \~$3,000 | Servo | URDF | unverified | SLOWING | | ORCA v1/v2 | 5 + wrist; 17/17 | Tendon | 1.1–1.25 kg (agg.) | n/a | 7 h17 (\~2k cycles); 5 h (\~3.5k) | \~$3k; $3.5–7.1k assembled (agg.) | Hall taxels (351), joint encoders optional | MuJoCo, IsaacGym | MIT | ACTIVE | | RUKA v1 / v2 | 5; 15/11 → 20/16 incl. 2-DoF wrist | Tendon | n/a | 2.74 N pinch; 6 kg | 20 h (v1); 5 h thermal (v2) | <$1,300 / \~$1.5K | Optional AS5600 encoders, eFlesh | MuJoCo (v1) | MIT (code) | ACTIVE | | Aero Hand Open | 5; 16 joints / 7 | Tendon | 374–389 g | 10–12 N | >400k cycles (self-rep.) | $314 BOM; $720 assembled | Motor encoders | MuJoCo (Menagerie, Playground) | Apache-2.0 code; CC BY-NC-SA CAD | ACTIVE | | AmazingHand | 4; 8/8 | Micro servo, parallel | \~400 g | n/a | n/a | <$200 | Servo | n/a | Apache-2.0 / CC BY 4.0 | ACTIVE | | HOPEJr hand | 5; 16 actuators | Tendon, micro servo | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a (humanoid \~$3k) | Servo; Hall glove | URDF (humanoid) | none detected | ACTIVE | | BiDexHand | 5; 21/16 | Tendon + linkage | n/a | 2.14 N; lifts 4.54 kg | n/a | "low-cost" | n/a | n/a | MIT | SLOWING | | ISyHand | 5 + articulated palm | Dynamixel on-joint | n/a | n/a | n/a | \~$1,300 | n/a | Isaac | open (unverified) | SLOWING? | | RAPID | 5; 20/20 | Dynamixel + parallel linkage | 1.148 kg | 7 N | n/a | \~$3,500 | 480 taxels + RGB-D | n/a | "to be released" | unverified | | InMoov | 5; 14/5 | Tendon | n/a | 2.72 N; 3.2 kg | n/a | \~$100 | none | none | CC BY-NC (prior knowledge) | DORMANT | | Sharpa Wave (closed) | 5; 22/22 | Direct drive | 0.8 kg | 20 N; 40 kg | 1M–2.5M cycles (self-rep.) | $50,000 (distributor) | >1,000 taxels/fingertip | Menagerie, URDF/USD | Closed (Apache-2.0 model) | Shipping | | Allegro V4/V5 (closed) | 4; 16/16 | Direct drive | n/a | 8.5 N (LEAP test) | Failed at 15 min (LEAP test) | \~$16K / $13K (V5 Sense) | Optional tactile | Menagerie, URDF | Closed | Shipping | | Inspire RH56DFX (closed) | 5; 12 joints / 6 | Linkage | 0.54 kg (agg.) | n/a | n/a | $5k–6.5k | Force/position | URDF (dex-urdf) | Closed | Shipping | | Unitree Dex5-1 (closed) | 5; 20/16 | Force-controlled joints | 1.1 kg | 10 N; 3.5–4.5 kg | n/a | not listed | 94 taxels (Dex5-1P variant) | n/a | Closed | Shipping | | Wuji (closed) | 5; 20/20 | Direct drive | <0.6–0.9 kg (agg.) | \~15 N (agg.) | \~40 min thermal (RUKA-v2) / 300k cycles (agg.) | $5.5K / $16K | none | n/a | Closed | Shipping | **Tactile sensors and data-capture devices** | Item | Type | Key numbers | Cost | License | Status | Stars | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Digit 360 | Multimodal fingertip | \~8.3M taxels; 1 mN | Free via call for proposals | Custom | DORMANT (repo) | 264 | | DIGIT | Vision-based tactile | — | via GelSight (unverified) | — | Archived | 216 / 93 | | Sparsh | Tactile encoders | 460k images; +95.1% on TacBench | — | CC BY-NC 4.0 | Archived | 227 | | ReSkin / AnySkin / eFlesh | Magnetic skins | 92% slip detection (AnySkin) | AnySkin sold by WowRobo | MIT (code) | DORMANT / DORMANT / SLOWING | 134 / 87 / 384 | | 9DTact | Vision-based tactile | 6-D force; 16 derivative papers | DIY | MIT, commercial OK | ACTIVE | 191 | | GelSlim 4.0 / Evetac | Vision / event-based | 1 kHz (Evetac) | DIY | open (unverified) | unverified | — | | TacSL (Isaac Lab) | Simulation | GelSight R1.5 model | free | BSD-3 | ACTIVE, experimental | 8.2k (Isaac Lab) | | Taccel | Simulation | 915 FPS at 4,096 envs | — | unreleased? | unverified | — | | DexUMI | Exoskeleton | 3.2× teleop speed; 86% success | DIY | MIT | ACTIVE | 266 | | DOGlove | Haptic glove | 21-DoF mocap; 5-DoF force feedback | <$600 | MIT | ACTIVE | 140 | | HOMIE | Exoskeleton + gloves | 15-DoF gloves | \~$500 | Non-commercial, gated | ACTIVE | 619 | | DexCap | Rokoko-based capture | — | glove $1,495 + rig | MIT | DORMANT | 421 | | AirExo-2 | Arm exoskeleton | — | low | CC BY-NC-SA | ACTIVE (light) | 43 | | UMI / FastUMI | Handheld gripper | 71.7% in the wild; 100k trajectories | $73 + $298 (UMI) | MIT / Apache-2.0 | ACTIVE | 1.5k / 58 | | Rokoko / Manus / SenseGlove Nova 2 | Commercial gloves | 7 sensors; 25 DoF EMF; 20 N brakes | $1,495 / quote (>$5k) / $7,299 | Closed | Shipping | — | --- ## 7. Gaps and pain points (with evidence) 1. **Tendon hands need constant maintenance, and durability numbers can't be compared.** - ORCA v1 needs periodic manual re-tensioning; its skin wears out at 2–4k cycles and its wires at 4.5–7k. - Aero's README warns that tendons need regular tension adjustment and that overload damages servos. Its release notes add overheat cutoffs, a derailment fix and a homing change that broke compatibility. - RUKA's tension varies per build and needs a calibration script. - Open hands report durability in hours (5 h, 7 h, 20 h). Closed hands claim 300k to 2.5M cycles. - There is no shared durability or benchmark protocol; RUKA-v2's table mixes hours and cycles. - **Opening:** standardized real and simulated test suites for hands. 2. **Weak proprioception means noisy labels.** - RUKA has no encoders by default (learned controller; 8.26° average error in v2). Aero has motor encoders only. ORCA's joint encoders are an option. - Joint-state ground truth in data from these hands is therefore approximate, and sim2real relies on models of tendon coupling. 3. **Simulation assets are patchy.** - Menagerie covers LEAP, Allegro, Shadow and DEX-EE, Sharpa, Aero, UMI and SO-101. - Not covered: ORCA (which ships its own MJCF), RUKA, Inspire, XHand, Wuji, AmazingHand and the HOPEJr hand. - dex-urdf and dex-retargeting have been idle since Aug 2025. - Tendon and soft-skin dynamics are rarely modelled; Aero is the exception, with 20 spatial tendons. - **Opening:** maintained, system-identified sim twins of the popular open hands, including their tactile layers. 4. **Tactile is fragmented and its sim support is weak.** - Sensing types in use: binary FSRs, Hall-effect taxels (ORCA), magnetometer skins (AnySkin, eFlesh), piezoresistive arrays (RAPID) and gel cameras (GelSight-type). - Meta's open stack is archived (DIGIT, TACTO, Sparsh), and Sparsh is non-commercial. - Isaac Lab's TacSL is experimental and built around a discontinued GelSight prototype. Taccel's release is unverified. - Reliability is reported as poor: DexUMI found FSRs attachment-sensitive and electromagnetic sensors drifting; AnySkin needs re-zeroing; ORCA's skin wears out. - **Opening:** calibrated simulation models and datasets for the sensors that open hands actually ship. 5. **Human-data capture is costly, closed or restricted.** - Gloves: Manus is quote-only (above $5k), SenseGlove $7.3k, Rokoko $1.5k. - RUKA's controllers run best with MANUS gloves. - Open options are research-grade and often legally restricted: HOMIE is gated and non-commercial, AirExo-2 is CC BY-NC-SA, GeoRT is CC BY-NC, Aero's CAD is non-commercial, Yale OpenHand is CC BY-NC, and HOPEJr has no licence. - DexUMI needs a new exoskeleton for each target hand. - Vision capture (Vision Pro, Quest, MediaPipe) is supported by LEAP v2, ORCA and Aero, but records no force. - **Opening:** a commercially licensable glove or exoskeleton that records both force/haptics and kinematics and retargets to many hands. 6. **There is a data-scale gap between grippers and hands.** - Gripper capture has reached 100k trajectories (FastUMI-100K, about 600 h). - Open dexterous projects report about 40–100 demos per task (DOGlove, RUKA-v2), and few include synchronised touch (RAPID does). 7. **Hands differ widely in shape and control.** - Actuator count ranges from 7 (Aero) to 22 (Sharpa); some hands have 4 fingers and some 5; joint conventions differ. - Retargeting has to be redone for every hand, and there is no standard hand-data schema. LeRobot is the closest thing to a common data and teleop layer. 8. **The price gap is closing.** - Mid-price closed hands now cost about the same as assembled open hands: AgiBot OmniHand $3,775 and Inspire about $5–6.5k, versus ORCA at $3.5–7.1k assembled. - So the case for open hands is now modifiability and licence, not price. --- ## 8. GitHub repos referenced (stars via GitHits metadata, 2026-10-02) | Repo | Stars | |---|---| | leap-hand/LEAP_Hand_API | 175 | | leap-hand/LEAP_Hand_Sim | 207 | | orcahand/orca_core | 597 | | orcahand/orcahand_description | not retrieved | | ruka-hand/RUKA | 199 | | Chestnut-Robotics/aero-hand-open | 976 | | tetheria/aero-open-sdk | not retrieved | | pollen-robotics/AmazingHand | 2.4k | | TheRobotStudio/HOPEJr | 831 | | nepyope/Project-Homunculus | 46 | | TheRobotStudio/V1.0-Dexhand | 577 | | iotdesignshop/dexhand_ros2_meta | 58 | | iotdesignshop/dexhand_description | 19 | | wengmister/BiDexHand | 257 | | grablab/openhand_node | 13 | | sharpa-robotics/sharpa-urdf-usd-xml | 24 | | psyonicinc/ability-hand-api | 53 | | google-deepmind/mujoco_menagerie | 4.1k | | google-deepmind/mujoco_playground | 2.2k | | dexsuite/dex-urdf | 383 | | dexsuite/dex-retargeting | 1.2k | | facebookresearch/GeoRT | 231 | | real-stanford/universal_manipulation_interface | 1.5k | | real-stanford/umi-on-legs | 548 | | real-stanford/DexUMI | 266 | | MrKeee/FastUMI-100K | 58 | | pollen-robotics/PincOpen | 169 | | TheRobotStudio/SO-ARM100 | 7.6k | | tonyzhaozh/aloha | 2.3k | | wuphilipp/gello_software | 551 | | huggingface/lerobot | 27k | | isaac-sim/IsaacLab | 8.2k | | facebookresearch/digit-design | 216 (archived) | | facebookresearch/digit-interface | 93 (archived) | | facebookresearch/digit360 | 264 | | facebookresearch/sparsh | 227 (archived) | | facebookresearch/tacto | 472 (archived) | | raunaqbhirangi/reskin_sensor | 134 | | raunaqbhirangi/anyskin | 87 | | notvenky/eFlesh | 384 | | linchangyi1/9DTact | 191 | | linchangyi1/DTact | 21 | | gelsightinc/gsrobotics | 206 | | Genesis-Embodied-AI/DiffTactile | 316 | | j96w/DexCap | 421 | | TEA-Lab/DOGlove | 140 | | InternRobotics/OpenHomie | 619 | | AirExo/AirExo-2 | 43 | | dexwild/dexwild | 46 | | unitreerobotics/xr_teleoperate | 1.6k | | OpenTeleVision/TeleVision | 1.3k | | Dingry/BunnyVisionPro | 359 |