1X gives humanoid robot NEO a 25-DoF pair of hands

Close your eyes, reach into a drawer, and you can instantly tell a coin from a screw purely by feel. Humanoid robots have never had that luxury. For decades, robotic hands have operated like blind forklifts, running blind position commands while their cameras do all the thinking.

Robotics company 1X just unveiled a brand-new tendon-driven hand for its NEO humanoid robot. Packing 25 degrees of freedom, the system aims to eliminate the hardware ceiling for home robotics.

Touch that listens back

Most robotic hands rely on massive gear ratios of 100:1 or more. The friction inside the gearboxes eats up any contact force before the motor can register it, leaving the hand completely numb.

1X flipped that architecture on its head. NEO places its motors inside the forearm, pulling proprietary tendons through the wrist at ultra-low gear ratios between 5:1 and 15:1. With 22 actuated degrees of freedom in the palm and fingers plus three at the wrist, every joint is natively force-controlled and fully backdrivable. Push against a finger, and it gives way while instantly measuring how hard you pushed.

Combined with high-resolution tactile skin that reads normal forces, contact points, and micro-slips, NEO can manipulate fragile items with surgical care. In video demos, the robot zips up jackets, plugs in USB-C cords, sorts grapes by color, spins light bulbs, and lifts 20-pound kettlebells. Because it is sealed to IP68 standards with food-safe materials, NEO can even wash its own hands in the sink.

Building 10,000 hands this year

Building an intricate 25-DoF hand in a lab is impressive, but mass-producing it is a different beast. 1X built a dedicated in-house production line covering motors, tendons, sensors, and polymers, targeting a run of 10,000 hands this year.

Competition is heating up quickly across the space. Tesla has introduced a 22-DoF hand for Optimus V3, and Singapore's Sharpa is ramping up mass production of its own 22-DoF tactile hand.

Why it matters

We think 1X's biggest breakthrough isn't mechanical dexterity, but treating the hand as an input device. A standard two-finger gripper limits AI agents to three basic verbs: pick, place, and push. A force-transparent 25-DoF hand turns every single touch into labeled physical training data, effectively creating the data feedback loop required for real-world embodied AI.

For anyone hoping to see robots inside actual homes, safety and water resistance are huge wins. Traditional stiff robot hands can shatter a wine glass or pinch a finger without blinking. NEO's backdrivable tendon joints yield naturally under impact, making accidental bumps harmless.

That said, complex tendon routings and soft tactile skins are notorious for mechanical wear and calibration drift over time. Shipping 10,000 hands in controlled runs is one thing; keeping 25 tiny joints aligned after thousands of hours of greasy kitchen chores is an entirely different test.