Tesla in Trouble? WIRobotics & Dexcel Robotics Break Through in the Hands Race

Companies like WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics are surpassing Tesla in the development of advanced humanoid robot hands with greater dexterity, strength, and efficiency

Questions to inspire discussion

Hand Design and Functionality

🖐️ Q: What are the key features of WIRobotics' Alex hand?
A: The Alex hand features a parallel wrist design for greater range and stability, uses a hybrid approach with tendons and direct drive actuators, and can manipulate tweezers and needles with high precision.

🤖 Q: How does Dexcel Robotics' Apex Hand stand out?
A: The Apex Hand has a true 3-DoF thumb, tactile skin, pulse sensing, and achieves a high Kapuni score for effective object grasping and manipulation.

👍 Q: Why is the pinky finger important in humanoid robot hands?
A: The pinky finger is more critical than the index finger for heavy grip, providing additional support and stability in humanoid robot hands.

Sensor Technology and Tactile Feedback

🔍 Q: What sensor capabilities does the Apex Hand have?
A: The Apex Hand features a complex sensor suite in the fingertips, palm, and wrist, enabling it to sense and respond to a wide range of stimuli.

💓 Q: How can robotic hands like the Apex Hand assist in medical scenarios?
A: These hands can sense pulse and pressure using tactile sensors, providing precise and reliable feedback for tasks like first aid and ambulance work.

🧤 Q: What surface feature enhances the Apex Hand's grip?
A: The Apex Hand has a rubbery surface that conforms to objects, providing improved grip and traction.

Degrees of Freedom and Actuation

🔧 Q: How many degrees of freedom does the FIX hand from Dexcel Robotics have?
A: The FIX hand has 21 degrees of freedom, with 4 joints per finger, 5 in the thumb, 16 active actuators, and 5 passive joints.

🦾 Q: What is the degree of freedom count in the Daxo Robotics hand?
A: The Daxo Robotics hand has 108 degrees of freedom, using tendons for dexterity and stability.

👋 Q: How many degrees of freedom does a human hand have?
A: A human hand has 27-28 degrees of freedom per hand, with most muscles located in the forearm pulling tendons for dexterity and stability.

Challenges and Innovations

🔄 Q: What is the Kapuni score and why is it important?
A: The Kapuni score measures a humanoid hand's ability to grasp objects, with 11 indicating perfect opposition and 0 indicating no opposition.

🤏 Q: What is pulp-to-pulp opposition and why is it significant?
A: Pulp-to-pulp opposition is a key feature allowing secure and precise object grasping, achieved through a 3-DoF thumb and full rotation.

🛠️ Q: What maintenance concerns exist for tendon-based hands?
A: Tendon-based hands require regular maintenance to ensure repeatability and dependability, as tendons can stretch and loosen over time.

Tesla's Optimus and Competition

🏭 Q: How is Tesla's Optimus Gen-3 hand performing compared to competitors?
A: Tesla's Optimus Gen-3 hand is struggling to finalize its design, while competitors like WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics are making breakthroughs in humanoid hand design.

🏃 Q: What capabilities does Tesla's Optimus need to improve?
A: Tesla's Optimus requires abduction and finger extension to perform tasks like mouse clicking and scissor cutting, which are challenging for traditional robotic hands.

🌐 Q: How are humanoid robots evolving in terms of application?
A: Humanoid robots are moving from labs to factories, hospitals, and hospitality, with dexterity and touch being key differentiators.

Testing and Real-World Application

🧪 Q: Why is real-world testing important for humanoid hands?
A: Real-world testing is essential for evaluating performance and capabilities in various scenarios, including grasping objects, sensing stimuli, and performing complex tasks.

🔬 Q: What distinguishes flashy demos from real-world capability in robotics?
A: Real-world capability requires consistent performance in diverse situations, unlike flashy demos that may only showcase specific, rehearsed actions.

Wrist and Thumb Design

🔄 Q: How does the Alex hand's wrist design differ from others?
A: The Alex hand features a parallel wrist design that provides greater range and stability compared to traditional designs.

👍 Q: What makes the Apex Hand's thumb design unique?
A: The Apex Hand has a true 3-DoF thumb with full rotation, enabling versatile grasping and manipulation capabilities.

Actuation and Control Methods

🎛️ Q: What actuation method does the Alex hand use?
A: The Alex hand uses a hybrid approach with both tendons and direct drive actuators for precise control and flexibility.

🕹️ Q: How does tendon-driven actuation benefit the Apex hand?
A: Tendon-driven actuation enables the Apex hand to achieve precise and controlled movement, with carefully routed and tensioned tendons for various motions.

Durability and Reliability

🔧 Q: What durability concerns exist for tendon-based robotic hands?
A: Tendon-based hands face issues with tendon creep, wear, and slack management problems, potentially affecting long-term performance.

♻️ Q: How does the FIX hand address durability concerns?
A: The FIX hand uses redundancy with 16 active actuators and 5 passive joints to compensate for potential tendon-related issues.

Key Insights

Advanced Hand Designs

1. 🖐️ WIRobotics' Alex hand features a parallel wrist design with two linear actuators for pitching and lateral movement, offering more yawing motion than Tesla's Gen 2 bot.
2. 👍 Dexcel Robotics' Apex hand boasts a true 3-DoF thumb, tactile skin, and pulse sensing, making it more dexterous and human-like than other humanoid robot hands.
3. 🤖 The Apex hand's tendons provide compliance and back drivability, allowing for more precise control and flexibility in robotic manipulation.
4. 🦾 Alex hand's distal joint is stiff and mechanical, while its proximal joint is tendon-driven, enabling straight finger and clinch control.

Thumb and Finger Mechanics

1. 👆 The Alex hand's thumb has limited two degrees of freedom with a direct drive mechanism for enhanced precision and control.
2. 🤏 Pinky finger is more critical than the index finger for heavy grip, as losing it causes instability in holding heavy objects.
3. 🖐️ The human hand has an impressive 27-28 degrees of freedom per hand, making it a challenging benchmark for robotic hand design.
4. 👋 Human hands are essentially puppets with forearm muscles pulling tendons to achieve dexterity.

Wrist and Forearm Innovations

1. 🦾 Alex hand's forearm incorporates a parallel wrist mechanism with two linear actuators for pitching and lateral movement.
2. 💪 This parallel wrist design allows for greater strength in curling direction and reduces actuator waste.

Actuation Strategies

1. 🔧 Alex hand uses a hybrid approach with both tendons and direct drive mechanisms for actuation.
2. 🎛️ This hybrid design offers more precision and control than purely tendon-driven systems but may be more complex to manage.

Dexterity Measurements

1. 📊 The Kapuni score measures a humanoid hand's grasping ability, with 11 indicating perfect opposition and 0 signifying no opposition.
2. 👌 Pulp-to-pulp opposition in the Apex hand's thumb rotation is crucial for grasping and manipulating objects.

Industry Implications

1. 🏭 Humanoid robots are rapidly transitioning from labs to factories, hospitals, and hospitality sectors.
2. 🏃♂️ Tesla's Optimus faces challenges in keeping pace with rivals like WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics in the humanoid hands race.

Design Challenges and Considerations

1. 🔧 Tendon-based hands like the Apex require regular maintenance to ensure reliability and durability.
2. 🧠 Software redundancy can compensate for mobility limitations in robotic hands, enabling task performance despite physical constraints.
3. 💡 Antagonistic pairs per motor in robotic hands can lead to creep, wear, and tear under cyclic loads, posing durability concerns.

Human Hand Capabilities

1. 🎹 The human hand's versatility allows for diverse tasks like playing piano, disassembling cars, and giving high-fives.
2. 🔬 Human tendon designs are evolutionarily optimized but challenging to replicate in robotic systems.

Future Directions

1. 🔮 Advanced dexterity and touch capabilities in robotic hands are crucial for humanoid robots to perform tasks in industrial, medical, and service settings.
2. 🏆 The race in humanoid robotics is shifting focus from flashy demos to real-world capability and practical applications.
3. 🔄  Continuous innovation in hand design, materials, and control systems is essential for bridging the gap between robotic and human hand capabilities.

#HumanoidRobots

XMentions: @HabitatsDigital @GoingBallistic5 @RoydenDSouza @AnatomyUMea @WIRobotics 

WatchUrl:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFlvPeEB5q0

Clips

• 00:00 🤖 Humanoid robotics is advancing rapidly, with companies like WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics making significant strides in developing sophisticated hands with precise motion and compliance.
  • The world of humanoid bots has seen significant developments with multiple companies, including Figure, Dexel Robotics, and Wii robotics, unveiling new bots, with recent advancements coming from unexpected countries like Korea.
  • The conversation analyzes a robotic hand's design, focusing on its degrees of freedom and actuation strategy, with observations on its range of motion, thumb movement, wrist motion, and finger flexibility.
  • The degrees of freedom in robotic hands, particularly those with tendon-driven systems, pose a control challenge, as they often have passive joints that move together, making it difficult to achieve precise finger movements.
  • The development of humanoid hands, such as those by WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics, focuses on achieving compliance and precise motion through various mechanical designs, including tendon-driven and flexure-based systems, to enable delicate manipulation tasks.
  • The development of humanoid hands with tip-to-tip prehension, like those with distal tendons and joints, is crucial for precise actions such as picking up small objects.
  • The speaker analyzes the humanoid robot's hand design, suggesting a hybrid approach with direct drive actuators and linkages, rather than tendons, to achieve precise control and movement.
• 11:10 🤖 WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics are surging ahead in the humanoid hands race with more advanced designs, outperforming Tesla's, offering better range of motion, strength, and efficiency.
  • There is no substantial content to summarize.
  • The WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics humanoid hands feature a parallel wrist mechanism with a forearm solution, offering advantages over Tesla's design, including a wider range of motion, more strength, and a more efficient actuator setup.
  • The humanoid robot hand, likely from WIRobotics or Dexcel Robotics, features a unique design with routed controls and tendons through the wrist and forearm, allowing for impressive flexibility and movement, but with some minor drawbacks such as a slightly unnatural thumb.
  • The speaker analyzes a robotic hand design, noting its strengths in emulating human hand shape and weaknesses in bulkiness, but overall considers it a good design with room for improvement.
  • Humanoid robot hands, such as Tesla's, face challenges in achieving precise movements, like picking up small objects or performing tip-to-tip grasping, due to limitations in their grip design and lack of antagonistic tendons.
  • Recent demos of humanoid hands are improving, showcasing a full range of movements and clearly demonstrating their capabilities with little room for error.
• 20:08 🤖 Dexcel Robotics' Apex hand and other humanoid robotic hands like Kapangi show impressive dexterity and human-like touch capabilities, surging ahead in the humanoid hands race.
  • The stability of a robot hand grasping a dumbbell may be compromised due to limitations in finger leverage and positioning, particularly with the little finger, and compliance in the wrist and arm.
  • Dexcel Robotics' Apex hand demonstrates human-like touch capabilities, enabling it to operate a cell phone with sensitivity similar to human skin.
  • The robotic hand demonstrates impressive dexterity with full three degrees of freedom in the thumb and various movements in the fingers, including opposition, flexion, and adduction.
  • A robotic hand can perform real opposition, allowing the thumb to move in an opposed way and grasp fingers, including the little finger, with a high level of control and precision.
  • The Kapangi robotic hand scores high due to its flexibility and grasping abilities, but its flat palm and lack of opposition between certain metacarpals prevent it from achieving a perfect score.
  • Indices start at zero.
• 27:56 🤖 WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics are surging ahead of Tesla in developing advanced humanoid hands with sensitive sensors and reflexes for better gripping and manipulation of objects.
  • The humanoid hand, particularly WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics, features advanced sensors, including those in the palm, which enable it to detect heat, shearing forces, and improve grip adaptability, making it more impressive than Tesla's in terms of complexity and functionality.
  • Humanoid robots like those from WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics are advancing in developing sensitive hands with reflexes and soft fingertips for better gripping and manipulation of objects.
  • Dexcel Robotics' humanoid hand features advanced sensors that can detect fine pressure points, shear forces, and even a person's pulse, making it suitable for applications in hospitals and healthcare.
  • Humanoid robots can sense pulse and oxygen levels using pressure, temperature, and other sensors, with high precision and repeatability, similar to smartphones.
  • The development of humanoid robot hands, as seen in demos from Tesla, WIRobotics, and Dexcel Robotics, requires not only impressive capabilities like using scissors and a mouse, but also repeatability, dependability, and autocorrection mechanisms to perform tasks consistently in chaotic environments.
  • Repeatability of robotic systems may degrade over time, making it essential to assess consistency at different intervals.
• 38:50 🤖 Humanoid robot hand development faces significant challenges in material durability and versatility, with companies like Tesla, WIRobotics, and Dexcel Robotics racing to overcome these hurdles.
  • Tendon-driven robotic hands face a significant challenge in finding a durable material that can withstand stress and stretching over time without requiring frequent tune-ups or manual adjustments.
  • The development of humanoid robot hands is challenging due to material limitations, with Tesla and others using linear actuators and materials like Kevlar or special aramids to balance durability and compliance.
  • A humanoid robot successfully removed a bottle cap by twisting it off, but analysis reveals the feat was facilitated by pre-loosening and intentional foam buildup in the bottle.
  • The speaker questions the capabilities of Tesla's robotic hand, suggesting that its true potential can only be evaluated when mounted on a robot with two hands and proper arm and eye coordination.
  • Humanoid robot hands face challenges in versatility, struggling to perform delicate tasks like opening various objects, using scissors, or handling different situations without modifications.
  • The speaker praises FIX for creating a taxonomy of grasp positions, having tested 33 different grasps.
• 47:47 🤖 Tesla's humanoid robot hand faces skepticism over capabilities and design durability, while competitors like WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics surge ahead.
  • The speaker expresses skepticism about Tesla's humanoid robot capabilities, specifically a chopstick task, and questions the degrees of freedom of the robot due to unclear Chinese text.
  • The robotic hand has 21 joints, comprising 16 active and 5 passive joints, with actuation likely achieved through tendons that enable various movements such as abduction, adduction, flexion, and extension.
  • The speaker analyzes the actuation strategy of a humanoid hand, speculating that it likely uses separate actuators for flexion and extension, and possibly a rotary actuator for abduction and adduction.
  • The speaker praises a video about humanoid hands for its instructive content, but expresses concerns about the durability of Tesla's hand design due to its complexity and potential heat buildup.
  • The speaker verified the translation of a Chinese text about Tesla's robotic hands, initially misled by incorrect chatbot and Google Translate results, but ultimately confirmed correct by consulting a native speaker, Tom Jang.
• 53:01 🤖 Tesla struggles to develop humanoid hands, while Dexcel Robotics and WIRobotics surge ahead with innovative designs, such as a hand with 108 degrees of freedom.
  • Dexcel Robotics is building a hand with 108 degrees of freedom using tendons, but there are concerns about tendon durability despite the team's top-notch credentials.
  • The durability of humanoid hand designs using antagonistic pairs of tendons per motor is likely to be hindered by creep, wear, and tear, but redundancy with lots of tendons can help mitigate these issues.
  • Developing humanoid hands for robots is a difficult problem, with many companies, including Tesla, struggling to find a solution through trial and error.
  • Tesla is struggling with the final design of its Gen 3, particularly with the hands, and is unlikely to reveal it by the end of this year.
  • Human hands are incredibly versatile and sophisticated machines, with most of their muscles actually located in the forearm, making their design and replication a crucial and challenging starting point for building robots.
  • Creating a robot with humanoid hands is extremely challenging due to the complexity of the human hand, with 27-28 degrees of freedom, requiring significant design and development of custom actuators, gearboxes, and electronics from scratch.
• 59:22 🤖 Tesla's Optimus project is struggling with humanoid hand design, allowing competitors like WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics to catch up.
  • The engineering difficulty of a humanoid robot lies primarily in designing its hands and forearm, which poses an extremely difficult problem to solve.
  • Tesla's Optimus project may be overthinking the humanoid hand design, potentially falling behind in the hands race despite being ahead in other mass production aspects.
  • Tesla's overly ambitious design for a humanoid hand with excessive degrees of freedom has caused significant delays, allowing competitors like WIRobotics and Dexcel Robotics to surge ahead.
  • Intelligent machines can compensate for limited mobility or lost parts through software redundancy, allowing them to adapt and perform tasks with less capability.

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Duration: 1:4:6

Publication Date: 2025-09-18T01:07:22Z

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