# Dexterous hands move past the DOF race: Boston Dynamics' new Atlas hand has four fingers and 13 degrees of freedom, with the VLA "brain" and cost emerging as bottlenecks

- Source: OFweek Robotics
- Published: 2026-10-15T06:02:00.000Z
- RoboHot: https://robohot.news/en/items/a4njg83i3thcoiglhlwlxwv2m
- Original: https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-10/ART-898890-8420-30707259.html

## Summary

Boston Dynamics has introduced a four-fingered dexterous hand for Atlas with 13 degrees of freedom in total, nearly double the previous generation's 7; Unitree's Dex5-S, released in September, also has only 22 degrees of freedom, as the industry shifts from a specs race toward pragmatism. Xinor Future says marginal returns diminish beyond 25 degrees of freedom, and existing VLA models can output only about 10 motion control vectors at the same timestamp, so many precise movements still require teleoperation. In the near term, low-DOF options such as three- and four-fingered hands remain mainstream, and products with 7-15 degrees of freedom are seen as the best market fit at this stage.