Atlas gets dexterous hands built for mass manufacturing and sim-to-real RL

Key points

Key takeaways from the official New Hands for Atlas product video by Boston Dynamics (October 2026), teased by the company's Director of Robot Behaviour for Atlas, Alberto Rodriguez:

Next-gen hand: The new GR3 hand for the Atlas humanoid nearly doubles dexterous degrees of freedom from 7 to 13, sized slightly larger than an average human hand but on average stronger.

Dexterity by design: The kinematics were chosen around a set of intrinsically possible behaviours, including pinch grasps, tripodal grasps, and gripping tool handles while pressing triggers.

Sim-to-real first: The hand was designed to simulate cleanly, closing the gap between human demonstrations and the embodiment, so the team can apply reinforcement learning for whole-body object manipulation.

Backdrivable and transparent: Forces applied to the fingers are proprioceptively sensed, and actuator backdrivability lets joints absorb impacts, protecting the gearbox during harsh contact.

Simulation fidelity: Simulation captures three layers: kinematics, dynamics (friction, torque, backlash) and contact dynamics, with sim-to-real matching tackled from both directions.

No pinky: After prototyping, including taping a team member's pinky to his ring finger for a day, the design team cut the pinky, judging three extra degrees of freedom not worth the added complexity, weight and power.

Why it matters: The multi-fingered hand functions as a full mini-robot and tracks towards mass manufacturing, positioning Atlas for dexterous work with tools and assembly — the core roadmap for real deployment.

Read more: YouTube · Alberto Rodriguez on X