LEAP Hand

The LEAP Hand from Carnegie Mellon University is an open-source research hand that Kenneth Shaw, Ananye Agarwal and Deepak Pathak presented at RSS in September 2023 for labs working on robot learning.

Unlike most hands in this group it has four fingers, three fingers plus a thumb, and each of its 16 degrees of freedom is driven by a separate Dynamixel servo mounted directly in the joint, model XC330-M288 according to the documentation. Its design novelty is a metacarpophalangeal joint with universal abduction, which lets the fingers move sideways at any flexion angle.

The parts are 3D-printed, partly in flexible NinjaFlex, and held together with standard plastic clips; the paper estimates parts at about 2,000 USD and assembly at around four hours. The only sensors are the servo encoders, giving joint angles. The hand connects over USB through a Dynamixel U2D2 adapter and runs on 5 V; ROS and Python APIs, Isaac Gym simulation and sim-to-real tooling are provided.

The code is released under the MIT licence, the CAD files under CC BY-NC-SA, which permits non-commercial use with attribution. Weight and load capacity are not stated in the paper, which only mentions an endurance test with 2 kg on one fingertip. There is no sales price, because the hand is built by the user.

A commercial counterpart among four-finger research hands is the Allegro Hand V4.