Boston Dynamics unveils newly designed hand for Atlas robot, increasing degrees of freedom from 7 to 13

Boston Dynamics has released a redesigned hand for the Atlas robot, increasing degrees of freedom from 7 to 13 and adding finger splay, enabling it to grip tools such as trigger-operated drills and welding guns. The design abandons humanlike appearance (dropping the pinky finger) and uses direct-drive actuators embedded in the joints, with no tendon cables and actuator packs that can be replaced as a whole, balancing simulability, mass producibility, and low-cost repair. Alberto Rodriguez said the team is studying the design adjustments needed to produce 100,000 hands per year and plans to use reinforcement learning to explore beyond-human motions such as finger splay.