ZWHAND brings a dexterous robotic hand that’s built around a micro drive approach: the motor, reducer, and control electronics are treated as a single module so each joint can be packaged tightly and still deliver repeatable torque and position control. In the booth demo, a simple UI mirrors finger poses, while an on-screen readout visualizes fingertip pressure as the hand detects touch, making the sensing layer as visible as the mechanics. https://www.zwhand.com/en/
On camera, the showcased unit is discussed as a 17 degree-of-freedom build, with a 20 active DOF variant referenced for richer thumb and finger articulation. Filmed at CES Las Vegas 2026, the conversation stays practical: how many micro actuators you can actually fit into a human-scale envelope, how a high-performance driver board and PCBA layout affect heat and cabling, and why the communication interface often determines whether a hand can be swapped onto a humanoid in the field.
Tactile sensing is the other half of the story. ZWHAND points to flexible e-skin and high-sensitivity pressure sensing to move beyond open-loop “close the fingers” grasps, toward force-aware manipulation that can detect slip, modulate grip strength, and support safer human–robot interaction. Even with a basic visualization, you can see the control stack implied here: per-finger calibration, force estimation, impedance control, and learned grasp policies that fuse touch with vision for stable grip.
The team also calls out a common limitation in dexterous hands: water exposure. For tasks like dishwashing, the blocker is usually sealing, corrosion resistance, and realistic IP ratings rather than DOF alone, so “loading dishes into a dishwasher” is more plausible than immersion. The booth shows a progression across generations, trending toward smaller form factor and longer duty life, with public materials citing 10,000+ hours as a target for continuous operation in controlled settings like a lab.
The bigger takeaway is why hands remain a bottleneck for embodied AI: multi-contact physics, compliance tuning, sensor noise, and the need to coordinate many joints under tight power, weight, and reliability limits. A 17–20 DOF design sits in a pragmatic zone where you can cover most everyday grasps without turning the end-effector into a constant maintenance project. As interfaces and tactile data pipelines mature, these hands start to look less like a demo prop and more like a usable device.
I’m publishing about 100+ videos from CES 2026, I upload about 4 videos per day at 5AM/11AM/5PM/11PM CET/EST. Check out all my CES 2026 videos in my playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7xXqJFxvYvjaMwKMgLb6ja_yZuano19e
This video was filmed using the DJI Pocket 3 ($669 at https://amzn.to/4aMpKIC using the dual wireless DJI Mic 2 microphones with the DJI lapel microphone https://amzn.to/3XIj3l8 ), watch all my DJI Pocket 3 videos here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7xXqJFxvYvhDlWIAxm_pR9dp7ArSkhKK
Click the “Super Thanks” button below the video to send a highlighted comment under the video! Brands I film are welcome to support my work in this way 😁
Check out my video with Daylight Computer about their revolutionary Sunlight Readable Transflective LCD Display for Healthy Learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U98RuxkFDYY
