Four fingers beat five: robot hand designs drop the humanoid fixation to cut costs 80%
Scobleizer · x · 2026-10-03
Scobleizer argues that while everyone wants humanoid-looking robots—especially the hands—engineering reality favors fewer fingers: four-finger hands cost roughly 80% less, are easier for today's AI to control, and are more reliable with fewer parts to break.
Key points:
- Mundane Bot, which builds robots for dirty and dangerous jobs, gets about 40% of human hand capability with a simple two-finger gripper at far lower cost
- Sharpa Robotics' dexterous hands run $50,000 each
- A quoted discussion notes Boston Dynamics' new hand uses four fingers (13 DoF), designed from the ground up around simulation training rather than human anatomy
He asks whether Elon will stick with full five-finger hands for Optimus, and suggests offering interchangeable hand options to match task needs at lower prices.
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