Neo Beta's robotic arms are both exciting and terrifying

1X's latest video shows the Neo Beta robotic arms in action, which are so precise they could easily be mistaken for human hands in gloves. The robotic hands in the demonstration effortlessly perform a range of complex tasks, such as screwing in a light bulb and pulling a switch on a string, carefully picking grapes and placing them in a container, picking up a tiny screw, unzipping a jacket, building a tower of larger children's blocks, and even opening a bag of snacks.

The movements of these hands are relatively slow, but at the same time extremely elegant. The secret to this ease lies in the advanced technological design. The waterproof hands, which are covered with rubber protection, use a closed external drive system via tendons. This means that the motors and servo mechanisms are removed from the palm itself and placed higher in the hand. This makes the palm smaller and significantly more flexible. The motors move a complex network of tendons that contract and release, which is very similar to the anatomy of the human hand, where muscles in the forearm control the fingers via tendons.

The fingers, palm, and thumb have a total of 25 degrees of freedom of movement, but the fingers can bend back in a way that is completely unnatural and beyond human capabilities, which can leave a somewhat eerie impression on the observer.

The arms are equipped with sensors that tell the robot when it is holding an object and how much force it should apply, preventing it from squeezing delicate objects too hard. They are also extremely strong, able to lift a handle weighing about 9 kilograms or bend a small weight on a pulley with a single finger.

When the humanoid robot Neo is finally available to a wider range of customers at a price of around 18,500 euros, these hands will be crucial for performing household chores. They can also help the robot itself. In the aforementioned video, the robot uses them to precisely pick up a charging connector and attach it to its side. The company 1X emphasizes that these hands will also provide valuable data for further learning artificial intelligence in robotics.