Xiaomi showed off a new Xiaomi Bionic Hand for factory work on October 27, 2026. It has 21 degrees of freedom (DOF), 26 motors and 1,500 tactile points covering the palm and fingers. The most interesting part isn’t the spec sheet but how Xiaomi got to those numbers.
It started with 1,827 factory procedures
Xiaomi’s automotive test center has 2,579 standard operating procedures (SOPs) across 16 typical production stages. The team picked 1,827 of them and filmed and motion-captured each from several angles. Together they cover 70.8% of the manual operations in those stages. The hand was built around that work, not the other way around.
Why 21 DOF and not more
Xiaomi ran simulations to find the point where extra joints stop paying off. Hands with 17 to 21 DOF had 15% to 38% higher average stable grasp success than hands with 6 to 15. Past 23 DOF, the gains slowed. Joint coupling mattered too. The far finger joint (DIP) bends about a third as much as the middle one (PIP), so pairs of joints with a correlation above 0.8 became candidates for sharing a drive.
Xiaomi Bionic Hand 26 motors, mostly in the forearm
The hand is mainly tendon-driven, with 5 direct-drive DOF on joints that carry lower loads. Most of the cable-drive motors sit in the forearm, which keeps the palm at 324 g and lets the fingertips respond faster. That’s a trade, not a free win. The motors’ weight is still there, just moved up the arm. Xiaomi also reworked the cooling system but hasn’t said how.
1,500 touch points
Resolution is 1 mm at the fingertips, finger pads and finger roots, and 2 mm in the palm. The sensors are replaceable, and the layout follows the human hand, so readings from Xiaomi’s tactile gloves can be compared with the robot’s own.
Tested on real parts
Xiaomi ran grip simulations with digital copies of factory tools, then tested on real parts and tools in multiple poses. It reports better grasp success and more human-like grasps than its earlier lower-DOF hand, but gave no figures.
What’s still missing
Xiaomi shared the full-palm tactile design in March, and the hand began a placement at its EV factory in July. There’s no word on wider deployment, pricing or sales.
