1X Unveils 25-DOF Biomimetic Dexterous Hand: 10,000-Unit Annual Capacity, a Quantum Leap in Robot Tactile Perception

Norwegian robotics company 1X Technologies has dropped a bombshell. A brand-new, 25-degree-of-freedom, tendon-driven dexterous hand has been officially unveiled. It is not only as flexible as a human hand but, more critically, possesses genuine tactile perception capabilities. Mounted on 1X's proprietary NEO humanoid robot, the hand performs a range of delicate operations—from screwing in lightbulbs and picking up screws to zipping up a jacket, plugging in a USB-C connector, and even communicating in sign language—all with apparent ease.

1X founder and CEO Bernt Børnich stated bluntly, "With these hands, robots can now do the things humans do with their hands every day." According to reports from media outlets including QuantumBit and South Korea's Naver Finance on July 10, the company—which counts both OpenAI and Samsung among its investors—has already built a production line with an annual capacity of 10,000 units for this hand and has completed the production of several hundred units.

This is not a simple hardware iteration; it represents a fundamental disruption of the perceptual logic governing robotic hands.

From "Write-Only" to "Force Transparency": An Engineering Breakthrough in Tactile Sensing

In the traditional field of robotics design, the vast majority of mechanical hands are essentially "write-only" devices. An engineer sends a position command to a motor, and the finger mechanically moves to the designated point. However, what the finger actually touches, whether the object is hard or soft, or whether it is slipping—the system knows none of this.

The core reason for this sensory black hole lies in the gear reduction ratio. The industry-standard high gear ratios of 100:1 or even 200:1, while amplifying the motor's force, also swallow external contact forces in massive internal friction. The signal dissipates before it can travel back to the motor; the hand itself is numb. Engineers are forced to add external cameras, attempting to use vision to "guess" what is happening at the fingertips.

1X's approach is completely different. NEO's new hand was developed entirely in-house from the ground up, utilizing a quasi-direct-drive tendon transmission system that dramatically compresses the gear ratio to between 5:1 and 15:1. Of the 25 degrees of freedom, the fingers and palm account for 22 fully actuated DOFs, with an additional 3 in the wrist, all supporting native force control and back-drivability.

This means that if someone reaches out and pushes one of its fingers, the finger will compliantly yield while precisely reporting how much force was applied. Force flows out from the fingertip, and information flows back along the same physical path. 1X defines this characteristic as "force transparency," a mechanism that turns every push, press, and pinch into a precise physical measurement.

Beyond force feedback, the hand incorporates powerful proprioceptive capabilities. Because each joint uses closed-loop control, the hand can understand its own spatial configuration in real-time without relying on external vision—much like a human can accurately touch their two index fingers together with their eyes closed.

Tactile perception is achieved through high-resolution tactile sensors densely covering the fingertips and contact surfaces. These sensors detect not only normal force and contact position but also shear force. The moment an object begins to slip, the hand detects this subtle change in real-time and readjusts grip strength before the object falls. Visualization footage released by 1X even shows a pressure heatmap during a handshake and the process of picking up fragile origami without causing any damage.

Jonathan Terfurth, Director of Actuators and Hands at 1X, noted that for small, transparent, deformable, or occluded objects, visual information often fails. This functional sensing skin, co-designed with internal sensors and the tendon system, becomes the key to adaptive robotic manipulation.

Performance and Durability: From Delicate Tasks to Withstanding Hammer Blows

In the demonstration video released by 1X, NEO showcases a wide range of manipulation capabilities covering human daily life and light industrial scenarios: assembling Lego bricks, picking single coins and screws from a wallet, rotating and installing a lightbulb, using a screwdriver, in-hand object rotation, zipping up a jacket, sorting grapes by color, pouring tea from a kettle, catching a soft ball, plugging in a USB-C charging cable, picking up a wine glass, and even fluid sign language communication.

Supporting these fine motor skills is a set of hardware parameters balancing strength and precision.

Performance Metric	Value
Total Degrees of Freedom	25 (22 in fingers/palm, 3 in wrist)
Thumb CMC Joint Peak Torque	3.5 Nm
Finger MCP Joint Torque	2.6 Nm
Fingertip Flexion Force	45N
Wrist Torque	17.75 Nm
Positioning Accuracy	±0.2mm
Ingress Protection Rating	IP68
Gear Ratio Range	5:1 to 15:1

These specifications give NEO an extremely broad operational range, capable of full-hand tool gripping, lifting heavy objects, precision pinch-grasping under load, as well as challenging actions like opening doors and pushing fully loaded carts. 1X specifically emphasized that these actions arise naturally from a sufficient number of independent force-controlled degrees of freedom operating at a human scale, rather than being hard-coded demonstrations for specific scenarios.

In terms of durability, the hand has undergone rigorous engineering validation. Components and complete finger assemblies have endured millions of test cycles, drive units have been validated at extreme temperatures, and the wrist joint has surpassed 2 million cycles under high load. The entire hand achieves an IP68 sealing rating, uses exclusively food-safe materials, can work next to a sink, and can rinse itself off when dirty.

Safety is guaranteed by the mechanical structure itself. The extremely low gear ratio, combined with tendon drive and low distal inertia, allows external impacts to safely back-drive the fingers. In slow-motion footage released by 1X, the hand is slapped, struck with a hammer, caught in a drawer, and slammed into foam plastic, compliantly yielding each time without damage. Dar Sleeper, VP of Product and Design at 1X, stated that the core design philosophy is to make the robot a "peaceful, safe presence," keeping it soft and compliant from the inside out.

The Logic of Mass Production: No Scaled Hand, No Embodied Intelligence

Beyond the technical specifications, the production scale of this hand carries strategic significance.

According to 1X, several hundred hands have already rolled off its scalable production line. The manufacturing process covers end-to-end, fully vertically integrated production: from proprietary motors, custom electronics, embedded sensors, a patented tendon system, and compact transmission mechanisms to hand-specific firmware, and finally the outer soft polymer and tactile sensing stack—all completed in-house. 1X estimates it now has the capacity to produce 10,000 hands this year.

The underlying logic of this mass production capability is this: a hand that cannot be manufactured at scale cannot generate data at scale; and without scaled physical interaction data, the advancement of embodied Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a non-starter. 1X is advancing a "world model" strategy, fusing and learning from internet videos, first-person human footage, simulation data, teleoperation data, and the tactile and force data collected by NEO during real-world tasks. The goal is for the robot to autonomously handle environments and tasks it has never encountered before.

Børnich defines this product as "the crystallization of intensive engineering," with the core goal of ensuring hardware no longer constitutes a capability ceiling, making data the sole barrier to capability growth.

Industry Landscape: The Dexterous Hand Becomes the Focal Point of Humanoid Robot Competition

The humanoid robotics field has long faced a structural contradiction: subsystems like bipedal locomotion, environmental perception, and computing platforms solve the problem of "where the robot can go," but the hand truly determines "what it can do once it gets there." If a robot is only equipped with a two-fingered gripper, the executable actions are basically limited to pick, place, and push—all without tactile feedback.

The breakthrough for dexterous hands is extremely difficult. Previously, Tesla Optimus's mass production plans faced challenges specifically due to the dexterous hand. In 2025, Elon Musk planned a limited production run of 5,000 Optimus units, but the plan was repeatedly delayed due to "extremely arduous engineering challenges" in manufacturing the hand and forearm. Multiple institutional estimates show that the dexterous hand accounts for approximately 15% to 20% of the total cost of a humanoid robot; Morgan Stanley's teardown analysis of Optimus Gen2 pegged the figure at 17.3%. Sanctuary AI founder Geordie Rose even suggested that the robot hand accounts for 50% of the robot's overall complexity.

1X started in Norway in 2014, initially entering logistics and security scenarios with its wheeled industrial humanoid robot EVE. From 2023, it shifted its focus to the bipedal home humanoid robot NEO. The company has received Series A funding led by OpenAI and Tiger Global, as well as a $100 million (approximately $14.8 million) Series B round with participation from EQT Ventures and others. Samsung Next, the venture capital arm of Samsung Electronics, also joined as a new investor in the Series B round.

Judging by the engineering integration demonstrated in this reveal, the deep coupling of motors, gears, tendons, sensors, and the skin layer indeed accounts for a significant portion of the system engineering effort. Various manufacturers are advancing along their respective technical paths, and the product delivered by 1X this time is pulling the concept of a "household chore robot" from a distant vision closer to concrete reality.