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Other·G Space·Model-prefilled gain·Published 2026-07-20

China wants to solve the hardest problem in robotics – making hands

Human hands – nimble, nerve-filled appendages that are the most flexible part of the human skeleton – are exceptionally complex. Many tasks that most people can do largely without thinking, from tying a pair of shoelaces to buttoning up a shirt, in fact require a complex set of neurological instructions and precise choreography. In thousands of years of human history, no machine has been able to truly replicate human’s greatest tool. But now, as artificial intelligence (AI) races forwards, some companies think t…

TRV-2026-0287JournalismPermanent record — cite & verify
China wants to solve the hardest problem in robotics – making hands

Publisher image: The Guardian.

The quick read

By July 2026, Chinese start-ups including LinkerBot and Wuji Technology were leveraging China's EV supply chain and government push for embodied AI to mass-produce dextrous robotic hands. LinkerBot reported about 5,000 hands per month, and Chinese media put the dextrous hand industry at over 50bn yuan in 2025, up from 13bn yuan in 2024.

If hardware scale translates into reliable manipulation, it could lower prosthetic costs from tens of thousands of dollars to $1,000 and help address China's ageing workforce, but the article shows software control is still unsolved. Researchers cite scarce 3D training data, hundreds of hours to teach simple tasks, and lack of touch sensing, leaving true multipurpose humanoids distant.

Main points
  • LinkerBot makes about 5,000 hands a month and plans to double output while chasing a $6bn valuation.
  • China's dextrous hand industry surpassed 50bn yuan ($7.4bn) in 2025, up from 13bn yuan in 2024, with over 1m robotic companies registered.
  • Wuji Technology's flagship Wuji glove collects movement, pressure and touch data to train spatial intelligence models.
Gain

Chinese start-ups are mass-producing dextrous robotic hands using China's EV and manufacturing supply chain, aiming to make humanoid robots useful for household tasks and to provide low-cost prosthetic hands for amputees.

The rundown

LinkerBot founder Zhou Yong says making a hand is 'one hundred times more difficult' than making a humanoid because dexterity is 10 times other body parts but volume is one tenth. Wuji Technology founder Pan Yunzhe says he moved from the US to Shenzhen because 'It was really impossible to do hardware in the United States because the supply chain problem is just so constraining'.

Training relies on teleoperation and sensor gloves because unlike large language models, data sources for three-dimensional models are scarce. Wuji's glove captures pressure and touch needed to avoid crushing objects, addressing what Pan calls 'The two most fundamental problems in dextrous manipulation'.

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