Friendly home robots has been a sci-fi fantasy for a long time. Quiet machines that help you do your laundry, take out the trash, maybe make dinner, and clean up after. But if robots are going to do it all, they’re going to need hands to do it all.
1X, a Norwegian-American robotics company, today revealed details about the five-fingered hands attached to its soft and useful robot companion, Neo.
The arms are built with functions designed to mimic how the tendons in the arms move the human hands. 1X says this gives Neo’s hands 25 degrees of freedom of movement, which is slightly less than the 27 degrees of freedom that human hands have. Cameras and AI intelligence help solve the broader context of what fingers are trying to capture. It is a combination of skills that gives the Neo bot a very wide range of motion. 1X says the hands can grasp unique shapes and detect when an object leaves its grasp. Fingers can also move very quickly and spread rapidly in areas that human digits cannot. They also have an IP68 waterproof rating, meaning the robot can wash its own hands.
Courtesy of 1X
It’s a range that engineers have aimed to dial in to match what a human can do. Jonathan Terfurth, 1X’s director of actuators and hands, says the range of motion can even surpass that of a human, enabling it to open doors, lift heavy objects, and even plug itself in when its battery starts to die.
“You want to be able to work with a human who has never worked with or interacted with a robot, and you still want it to be safe and flexible,” Terfurth says. “The range of motion can be very bad, but we’re trying to get as close to what humans can do so we can survive in the world.”
Plus, this is part of growth Chat timeGPT to robotics, where robots have gone from clumsy nail machines to capable handlers, able to gently carry fragile objects and become more helpful in managing menial daily tasks and boring office jobs.
The market for humanoid robots tends to be dominated by tough, laugh The managers were meant to be exposed to a defense or other industry contract. 1X takes a different approach to its robot. Neo is a soft and flexible robot covered in a 3D mesh shell. Its design is inspired by characters like Baymax, the adorable robot from the Disney movie Great hero 6. For limited numbers, the early access price is $20,000, or $500 a month to have it in your home, although a lump sum will advance delivery to 2026.
