Boston Dynamics Dropped the Pinky From Atlas's New 13-Joint Hand
Hardware / news
Boston Dynamics Dropped the Pinky From Atlas's New 13-Joint Hand
The redesign nearly doubles the joint count from 7 to 13, but the company has published no payload, force, price or production date for the hand.
Boston Dynamics has replaced the seven-joint hand on its Atlas humanoid with a 13-joint design that has four fingers and no pinky, and the company says it is built for production runs the old hand never could support.
IEEE Spectrum's Evan Ackerman reported the redesign on Oct. 1, 2026, and The Robot Report carried the company's own account the same day. The numbers that are missing matter as much as the ones that are present, so this piece separates them.
What the 13-joint hand changes
The previous Atlas hand had seven degrees of freedom and was built mainly to grasp a wide range of objects, according to The Robot Report. The new one has 13, with four on the thumb and three on each of the other three fingers.
Every joint uses a single actuator type, the actuators are fully enclosed, and no cables cross a joint. Ackerman wrote that there are no tendons to stretch or break, that the actuators sit directly in the joints, and that each actuator pack is one replaceable unit. Robotics 24/7 said strength is similar to the old hand, which it described as able to carry a loaded minifridge weighing over 100 lb.
| Spec | Previous hand | New hand |
|---|---|---|
| Degrees of freedom | 7 | 13 |
| Fingers | 3 | 4 (thumb has 4 DOF) |
| Cables across joints | Not stated | None |
| Tactile sensing | Not stated | Fingertips and palm |
The Robot Report adds that dense pressure sensors cover the fingertips and palm. That is the one sensing claim in any of the three accounts, and none gives a sensor count or a force resolution.
Why there is no pinky
The pinky was cut deliberately. Dylan Thrush, a mechanical engineer on the Atlas team, said the extra dexterity did not justify the added complexity, size and power draw of three more joints and their actuators, per The Robot Report.
The tape test is attributed differently by the two outlets. The Robot Report says Zachary Jackowski, Boston Dynamics' chief product and technology officer, had the team tape the pinky and ring fingers together for a day. IEEE Spectrum has Alberto Rodriguez, director of robot behavior, describing the team spending a day with pinkies taped before agreeing to drop it. Both place the exercise before the decision.
Rodriguez told Spectrum that "hands are a ruthless design trade-off," and said the team is working out what must change "if we want to make 100,000 of these hands a year."
What Boston Dynamics did not publish
The hand is about the size of a large human hand, which fixes the actuator size, according to The Robot Report. That is a constraint, not a spec. Payload at the fingertip, grip force in newtons, runtime, unit cost and a ship date are absent from all three sources.
The companion Atlas, per Robotics 24/7, carries more than 100 lb. That is a whole-robot figure, and a loaded minifridge is a carried-object demonstration, not a hand rating.
The design also arrives against a specific buyer. A week before the announcement, Boston Dynamics opened its Robotics Metaplant Application Center at Hyundai Motor Group's Metaplant America in Georgia, a site that trains staff to integrate Atlas into automotive manufacturing, The Robot Report said. Neither article ties the hand to a Hyundai delivery date.
How it compares with humanlike hands
Spectrum contrasts the Atlas hand with the near-humanlike hands from 1X, Unitree, Figure and Clone Robotics. Those designs can do fine dexterous work, Ackerman wrote, but are typically fragile, expensive or both, and he judged that humanlike hands are likely limited to research and demos for now.
The finger splay is the part with no human equivalent. The fingers open wider than a human hand allows, which lets one finger push against another and lets the hand hold the trigger handle of a drill or welding torch. Rodriguez said reinforcement learning could find uses for that extra range.
Other humanoid makers are also moving from demos to production. The Terminal has covered Agility Robotics' Digit at AGCO and Tesla's Optimus line in Fremont.
The number to watch is the first published fingertip force or hand unit cost. Until one appears, 100,000 hands a year is a design target Rodriguez described, not a manufacturing commitment.
Sources
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