Don't Give Gesture Platforms' William Lin a Hand — He's Brought His Own: The High-Dexterity HW1

Gesture Platforms' William Lin has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a highly-dexterous robotic hand — offering 10 active degrees of freedom across 19 joints: the Gesture Hand Wrist 1 (HW1).

"When I started this project, I naively wanted to build myself a hand that I could use for testing new control methods and algorithms," Lin explains of how the HW1 project began. "But as I suffered through iteration hell, I was unable to rescue myself with a market solution that provided more than finger flexion and wouldn't cost me my own hand. The HW1 has now undergone 20 iterations over 3+ years. While early versions focused exclusively on the hand, the design eventually pivoted to the direct- and tendon-driven architecture with an integrated wrist that you see today. This shift better mimics human anatomy and offers future potential for strength and dexterity scalability."

The HW1, designed to mimic a five-fingered human hand, drives 19 joints through 10 active degrees of freedom — individual finger flexion, finger splay, a three-degrees-of-freedom thumb, and a two-degrees-of-freedom wrist — from an integrated Espressif ESP32-S3 over either USB Type-C or Bluetooth connectivity. The palm, wrist, and base knuckles are covered in four-way stretch fabric to cover pinch points and protect against debris, while the fingertips are covered in soft texture silicone for grip — with the current version of the arm able to handle a 1kg dynamic or 3kg static (around 2.2lbs dynamic and 6.6lbs static) load.

All told, this gives the hand some impressive dexterity: it can, Lin promises, handle everything from full finger-to-thumb opposition to complete palm flattening, pointing, grasping, flicking, pinching, and more, all with ±1mm repeatability. A desktop app for Microsoft Windows provides textual, timeline-based, controller, and live-streaming control methods, while C++ and Python software development kits (SDKs) are available for those who want to customize the hand's operation.

There is one feature lacking in the spec sheet, however: any form of direct feedback, like torque or pressure sensors. "There are no direct torque sensors at the joints," Lin admits, "but current draw is measured for each motor, so you can estimate loads that way."

The HW1 is now funding on Kickstarter, with launch day pricing set at $699 — a claimed 36% discount over the device's planned retail price. Lin has also indicated the potential for aspects of the hand beyond its aesthetic accessories to be released under an open source license, but says that as the project is in the early stages of design-for-manufacturing (DFM) "it is not at a point that people could reliably make use of my files." Hardware is expected to begin shipping in November this year, but as with all crowdfunding campaigns fulfillment is not guaranteed.