1X unveils NEO robot hands that are nearly indistinguishable from human ones

Norwegian robotics company 1X Technologies has unveiled a new generation of hands for its NEO humanoid robot — featuring 25 degrees of freedom and tactile sensors that bring a mechanical hand about as close to human capability as anything shown publicly so far.

What the New Hands Can Do

In demonstrations shared by the company, NEO's hands assembled LEGO models, handled screws and coins, used tools, plugged in USB-C cables, zipped up clothing, and caught soft balls. Thanks to tendon-driven actuation and fingertip tactile sensors that read pressure in real time, the robot can carry out delicate tasks like picking grapes, installing light bulbs, and even communicating in sign language.

How It Works Technically

The key engineering feature is "force transparency": thanks to low gear ratios in the actuators (ranging from 5:1 to 15:1), each joint in the hand can both exert force and back-drive to sense contact force — meaning the hand literally feels what it's touching. Combined with high-resolution fingertip tactile sensors that detect force direction, contact location, and shear force, the design solves a long-standing problem in traditional robotic grippers, which could only apply force but couldn't "feel" what they were holding.

Production and Practicality

1X has already set up a production line with an annual capacity of 10,000 hand units and has manufactured several hundred so far. The hands are IP68 sealed, making them waterproof and washable — which lets NEO not just cook, but literally wash its own hands afterward.

What This Means in Practice

For a long time, hands have been the real bottleneck in humanoid robotics: building a robot that can walk or balance turned out to be easier than teaching it fine household manipulation, like zipping a jacket or holding a fragile object without crushing it. If 1X's design genuinely scales to the claimed production volumes, it removes one of the last major technical barriers standing between humanoid robots and actually being useful around a home or a workplace next to people, rather than just demonstrating a walk on a trade-show floor.

This material is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice.