Dexterous Robotic Hands
Multi-fingered, high-DOF end-effectors that give robot arms human-like grasping and in-hand manipulation capabilities.
Why Dexterous Hands Matter
Traditional parallel-jaw grippers handle a narrow range of objects. Dexterous hands unlock fine manipulation tasks such as tool use, fabric handling, and assembly that require independent finger control and tactile feedback. They are increasingly critical for imitation-learning research, where human-like morphology simplifies the correspondence between human demonstrations and robot actions.
Hands Available at SVRC
Orca Hand
A compact 12-DOF tendon-driven hand designed for research-grade manipulation. Its lightweight form factor integrates with most 6-DOF and 7-DOF arms. The Orca Hand supports torque-based grasping and ships with ROS 2 drivers out of the box.
View Orca Hand specs and pricing →
LinkerBot O6
A 6-DOF dexterous gripper-hand hybrid built for industrial and research use. It offers high grip force, fast open/close cycles, and modular fingertip attachments for different surface profiles.
Inspire Dexterous Hand
Inspire offers a 16-DOF anthropomorphic hand with individually actuated fingers. It is widely used in teleoperation and imitation-learning setups and supports multiple communication interfaces (CAN, serial, ROS).
Browse Inspire products in the store →
Wuji Hand
A high-DOF research hand from Wuji Robotics featuring robust tendon routing and a compact palm profile. Designed for long-duration data collection, it pairs well with the SVRC data pipeline for recording grasp demonstrations.
Allegro Hand
The Wonik Allegro is a 16-DOF fully actuated hand with torque-controllable joints. It has a large open-source community and extensive sim-to-real tooling (Isaac Gym, MuJoCo). A proven platform for dexterous RL and imitation learning research.
Key Selection Criteria
- Degrees of freedom — More DOFs enable more human-like grasps but increase control complexity.
- Payload and grip force — Match to your target object set (e.g., kitchen items vs. industrial parts).
- Actuation type — Tendon-driven hands are lighter; direct-drive hands offer faster position control.
- Sensor integration — Tactile fingertips (see our tactile sensing guide) dramatically improve grasp success.
- Software ecosystem — ROS 2 support, URDF availability, and sim model quality matter for research velocity.
Common Use Cases
- Imitation learning from human hand demonstrations
- In-hand manipulation and re-grasping
- Bi-manual assembly and tool use
- Household and kitchen object manipulation
- Prosthetics research and human-robot interaction
Next Steps
Ready to choose a hand? Compare all hardware side by side, or visit the SVRC Store to see pricing and availability. For integration help, reach out to contact@roboticscenter.ai.