The Next Generation of Robotic Hands

ETH Zurich’s Soft Robotics Lab introduces the Orca hand, a tendon-driven, sensorized robotic hand designed to bring humanlike dexterity within reach of everyday research labs. Built from pop-in pin joints and assembled in under eight hours for about $2,000, Orca offers durability, easy repair, and impressive accuracy rivaling far bulkier direct-drive systems. Reliability tests show continuous gripping for hours without overheating or slack issues, thanks to a low-friction tendon design and a smart retensioning mechanism.

The team showcases Orca’s autonomy with long-horizon pick-and-place loops and robust reinforcement-learning policies that enable tasks like tennis-ball reorientation. In short: a fast-to-build, resilient, high-performance robotic hand that lowers the barrier to real dexterous manipulation research.