Boston Dynamics unveils GR3 hand for Atlas with 13 degrees of freedom and tactile skin
Boston Dynamics showed GR3 on 1 October 2026, a four-finger Atlas hand with 13 degrees of freedom, up from 7, and pressure sensors across fingertips and palm.
By Emre AlemdarPublished
Tech AI LatestBoston Dynamics presented GR3 on 1 October 2026, a new hand for its Atlas humanoid robot. It has four fingers and 13 degrees of freedom, up from 7 on the previous GR2 hand, with a four-degree-of-freedom opposable thumb and dense pressure sensors across the fingertips and palm. The company says the hand can carry a loaded minifridge of more than 100 lb and was designed for simulation-based training. No ship date is given.
Key facts
- Published: 1 October 2026 (Boston Dynamics blog)
- Degrees of freedom: 13 on GR3, up from 7 on GR2
- Layout: four fingers, a four-degree-of-freedom opposable thumb and three-degree-of-freedom fingers, no little finger
- Sensing: dense pressure sensors on fingertips and palm, plus high-rate actuator feedback
- Strength: similar to GR2; carries a loaded minifridge of more than 100 lb
- Not stated: availability date; the company calls the hand a long-term bet
What Boston Dynamics announced
Boston Dynamics described a new hand for its Atlas humanoid on 1 October 2026. Called GR3, it has 13 degrees of freedom, up from 7 on the previous GR2 hand. It has four fingers: an opposable thumb with four degrees of freedom and three fingers with three degrees of freedom each. There is no little finger. The company credits its chief technology officer with a tape experiment that showed the pinky could be dropped, and the post sums up the approach as "the best part is no part".
Every joint is driven directly by a single type of actuator. The actuators are fully enclosed and no cables cross the joints. Dense pressure sensors cover the fingertips and palm, and the hand also uses high-rate feedback from its actuators. Boston Dynamics says the hand is a little larger than an average human hand and describes it as a companion to the new-generation Atlas.
What the hand can do
Strength is similar to the previous hand. The post says GR3 can carry a loaded minifridge weighing more than 100 lb and describes Atlas itself as having a payload of more than 100 lb. The hand can slide its thumb, make pinch and three-finger grasps, and hold tools with triggers, such as drills, torque drivers, grinders, nail guns and welding torches.
The hand was designed for high-fidelity simulation and training with reinforcement learning in simulation before transfer to the real robot. Boston Dynamics reports initial results showing promising transfer from simulation to reality in dynamic tasks, but gives no success rates, task counts or comparison with GR2. The post does not give a ship date and calls the hand a long-term bet.
What changed for humanoid hardware
Grasping varied objects and tools needs both dexterity and sensing. Boston Dynamics chose fewer fingers with more joints and dense touch sensing, and built the hand to be trained in simulation first. NVIDIA's reference humanoid announced three weeks later uses five-finger hands with 20 degrees of freedom each, which shows that hand design has not settled. Figure's Helix 2.5 results show the model side of the same problem.
What to watch next
The open points are figures for the simulation-to-reality transfer, which Atlas deployments will use GR3 first, and when the hand moves from research to production. None are stated in the announcement, and the company has not said whether GR3 will be offered apart from Atlas. Pricing for Atlas with GR3 is not stated either. More humanoid hardware stories are under Robotics & Physical AI.
What changed
| Before | Atlas used the GR2 hand with 7 degrees of freedom |
|---|---|
| After | The GR3 hand has 13 degrees of freedom, four fingers, dense tactile sensing and a design built for simulation training |
| Who it affects | Atlas customers and developers, and teams designing dexterous robot hands |
Questions people ask
- How many degrees of freedom does the new Atlas hand have?
- 13, up from 7 on the previous GR2 hand, according to Boston Dynamics' 1 October 2026 post.
- Why does the GR3 hand have four fingers?
- Boston Dynamics says a tape experiment showed the little finger could be dropped, in line with its view that the best part is no part.
- When will the GR3 hand ship?
- No date is given. The company describes the hand as a long-term bet.
Sources
- Robot Hands for Modern AI and Real Work (Boston Dynamics, 1 Oct 2026)
Reference pages
- Boston Dynamics company
Spotted an error? See the corrections policy and tell the editor. Facts in this story come from the sources listed above; vendor claims are attributed.
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