HARDWARE

This robotic hand can be 3D printed by anyone and assembled in under 8 hours.

Researchers at ETH Zurich created the Orca hand, fully open-sourced with artificial bones and tendons.

For context, advanced robotic hands cost over $100,000 and require constant maintenance…

Orca… pic.twitter.com/LEUkM8hVDy

— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) 19 mars 2026

This robotic hand can be 3D printed by anyone and assembled in under 8 hours. Researchers at ETH Zurich created the Orca hand, fully open-sourced with artificial bones and tendons. For context, advanced robotic hands cost over $100,000 and require constant maintenance… Orca costs under $2,000. 50x less (!) A self-calibration system maps every motor to every joint, eliminating the manual tuning that tendon-driven hands usually need. Each fingertip has built-in tactile sensors covered by silicone skin. The hand can actually feel when it touches something, giving it feedback to grip objects without crushing them or letting them slip. It can hold over 20 lbs, learn tasks by watching human demonstrations, and transfer skills trained in simulation directly to the real world. The team proved its durability by having it pick up and place a cube over 2,000 times across 7 hours with no human intervention. The full design files and source code are open source, so any robotics lab in the world can start building one today.

→ View original post on X — @rowancheung, 2026-03-19 16:12 UTC