Xiaomi Unveils 21-DOF Bionic Dexterous Hand: 26-Motor Hybrid Drive, Full-Palm 1,500-Point Tactile Coverage
Xiaomi Technology's official WeChat account has disclosed R&D progress on a new-generation high-DOF bionic hand. The design is based on real production data from the pilot test center of Xiaomi Auto's Intelligent Manufacturing Department, and is positioned as a general-purpose dexterous manipulation solution for flexible manufacturing scenarios. The team collected motion data from 1,827 of 2,579 SOPs across 16 typical workstations, covering more than 70.8% of manual operation processes at typical workstations, and confirmed that 21 DOF is the optimal balance point for current factory scenarios, with average stable grasp success rates improving by 15% to 38% compared with 6- to 15-DOF versions. The design adopts a 26-motor hybrid drive that is primarily tendon-driven and integrates 5 direct-drive DOF; the hand itself weighs only 324 grams, with full-palm tactile coverage of 1,500 sensing points, at 1 mm resolution between fingers and 2 mm on the palm.
Why read this
AI score 52
The original text provides empirical evidence for the DOF trade-off and specific designs for actuation, tactile sensing, and heat dissipation, offering a look at the engineering trade-offs of dexterous hands in factory scenarios.
Topics
Body · AI translation
On October 27, Xiaomi Technology's official WeChat account published today the R&D progress of its new-generation high-degrees-of-freedom bionic hand. The design is based on real production data from the pilot test center of Xiaomi Auto's Intelligent Manufacturing Department, continues the ultimate bionic approach, and is positioned as a general-purpose dexterous manipulation solution for flexible manufacturing scenarios. The R&D team collected multi-angle video and motion capture data for 1,827 of the 2,579 SOPs across 16 typical factory work sections, with the dataset covering manual work processes in more than 70.8% of typical work sections. Through degrees-of-freedom utilization analysis, joint coupling analysis, and grasping simulation ablation validation, the team confirmed that 21 degrees of freedom is the optimal balance point between manipulation coverage and engineering benefits in current factory scenarios; compared with 6-to-15-degree-of-freedom versions, the average stable grasp success rate increases by 15% to 38%, and when further increased to more than 23 degrees of freedom, the marginal benefits slow markedly. It adopts a configuration driven primarily by tendon ropes, integrating 5 direct-drive degrees of freedom to form a 26-motor hybrid drive scheme. The rope-drive motors are centrally arranged in the forearm section, and the palm weighs only 324 grams, effectively reducing the end-effector's rotational inertia and improving control response speed. The scheme is also equipped with tendon rope tension sensors to compensate for rope creep, enabling fine force control of the fingertip ends and the grasping process; full-palm tactile coverage includes 1,500 sensing points, with tactile resolution reaching 1 mm between the fingers and 2 mm on the palm, and the tactile modules support replacement and maintenance. In response to the heat dissipation pressure brought by the dense motor layout, the team developed a thermal prediction model and high-performance heat-dissipating fabric. The thermal prediction model can predict temperature changes over the next 5 to 10 minutes with prediction accuracy better than 3°C, supporting advance scheduling of thermal management strategies. The heat-dissipating fabric, under the full-body wrapped appearance design, improves natural heat dissipation efficiency to handle operating power consumption of up to the hundred-watt level per hand.