Boston Dynamics: a redesigned Atlas hand, built for sim-to-real
From the Robots digest for 2026-10-01
BD's new Atlas hand (The Robot Report + companion): 13 degrees of freedom, directly actuated, designed for high-fidelity simulation/sim-to-real RL — and explicitly not human-shaped ("may outperform human-like designs"): engineers taped their pinkie+ring fingers together for a day to enumerate what the old design couldn't do. Prior generation's three-finger hand was never intended for mass production; this one is.
What's genuinely new: end-effector redesign as the next Atlas chapter after legs (Digit 5's Sep 15 analogous move) — mass-production intent stated in a BD product post, which fits the thread's disclosure-not-hype pattern.
Link: The Robot Report