Industry
Samsung is developing five-finger, tendon-style robot hands for its humanoid, Korean paper reports
Short answer: Samsung Electronics is developing a humanoid robot with five fingers on each hand, using cables that pull the fingers in a way similar to human tendons, the Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh reported on 27 October 2026, citing industry officials. The work sits in Samsung's Robotics eXperience (RX) division, which the paper says was set up in July by combining the company's robot research and commercialisation teams and reports directly to the CEO.
According to the report, Samsung's chairman was expected to visit the RX division at the company's research campus in Seocho, Seoul, to see a demonstration of the robot's hands picking up and handling objects. The paper also said Samsung has been focusing on hand manipulation and has recruited people who previously led robotics strategy at Boston Dynamics, the Hyundai Motor Group company. Samsung has not published technical details of the hands.
The Hankyoreh contrasts different design choices among Korean groups. Boston Dynamics' new Atlas uses four fingers per hand, which the paper says simplifies the drive mechanism and reduces load on the actuators, and Hyundai plans to deploy Atlas at its car plant in Georgia, US, from 2028. LG Electronics' CLOiD home robot and Tesla's Optimus have five-fingered hands, and LG Group has said it will work with NVIDIA on a bipedal humanoid due to be unveiled in the first quarter of 2027, the report said.
Experts quoted by the paper noted that finger count alone does not decide dexterity: degrees of freedom, joint range and touch sensors matter too. KAIST professor Park Hae-won told the paper that five-finger hands make it easier to reuse training data recorded from human hand motion. The paper expects CES 2027 in January to show how commercially ready the Korean groups' humanoids are. For more on Korea's humanoid market, see our report on Chinese humanoid makers seeking trials in South Korea.