Norwegian-American robotics firm 1X has unveiled details of the five-finger hands on Neo, its soft, home-focused humanoid robot, marking another step in the push to build genuinely helpful domestic machines. The hands use actuators that mimic human tendons to deliver 25 degrees of freedom of movement, close to the 27 of a human hand, and are paired with cameras and AI to grasp awkward shapes and sense when objects are slipping. They can also move extremely fast, hyperextend beyond human limits, and carry an IP68 waterproof rating, allowing the robot to wash its own hands.

Neo is deliberately styled as a soft, approachable companion inspired by Baymax from Big Hero 6, rather than the hulking industrial robots common in the sector, and is offered in limited early-access quantities at $20,000 or $500 a month. However, full autonomy is not yet achieved: Neo is partly teleoperated via an "Expert Mode" in which remote human operators can see and control it, raising privacy and security concerns that 1X did not fully address. The firm also concedes that some promotional videos are human-operated to show the hardware's upper limits, making it hard to judge real-world performance. The article further notes the notably sensual tone of Neo's marketing.