Handroid

Is it a hand or a humanoid? Handroid, an open academic project from UNC Chapel Hill and Stanford published on arXiv in July 2026, is both: a fully 3D-printed desktop robot that works as an anthropomorphic hand and can also stand on its fingers and walk as a small humanoid.

It has 27 degrees of freedom in total, 20 of them in the hand, driven by compact modular actuators that report joint position, with an integrated control board handling power, sensing and status. The robot stands 0.33 m tall and weighs 2.05 kg. The authors demonstrate in-hand manipulation at a 30 Hz control rate and lifting a metal cup of about 270 g; they do not state payload or finger count.

Everything is released under the MIT licence with Onshape CAD and a bill of materials, although code and documentation are still being prepared. There is no price because it is a build-it-yourself design; only the parts cost money. A commercial hand in a similar budget class is HW1, and another university design is LEAP Hand.