CASBOT Hands Splits Off Three Dexterous Hands, Plus a Tendon Preview
On August 7 in Changsha, CASBOT Hands (Zhongke Huisi Embodied Intelligence) put three new dexterous hands on a table: L1, D1, and M1. The same event previewed an F Series tendon-driven biomimetic hand. RoboticsTomorrow carried the launch on August 12. The new company was formed in July 2026 by CASBOT (Zhongke Huiling), Lens Technology, and Hunan Huaxia Investment Group.
Three hands, one job each
The launch pitch is that one hand cannot cover every cell. L1 is the cheap, light, high-cycle option. D1 is the higher-DoF generalist with tactile sensing. M1 is modular: a standard palm plus swap-in fingertips.
- L1: fewer degrees of freedom, lower arm-tip mass, fast open/close for repetitive work. Four L1-equipped robots already played live guitar, bass, keys, and drums as the CASBOT BAND at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
- D1: five-finger, independent multi-joint motion, coordinated fingers, tactile perception.
- M1: “standardized hand body plus functional fingertips” for task-specific tips.
- F Series (preview): tendon-driven, higher DoF, compliant motion closer to a human hand.
The company also showed data gloves and a data-collection toolchain. Founder Zhengtao Zhang, also a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Automation, said the spin-out exists so those pieces can be productized instead of living only inside full humanoid platforms.
What a reseller already lists
AIFITLAB’s product page for the CASBOT Handle-L1 lists a Standard and a Pro (tactile) edition at $2,700, left or right, with a backorder note. The spec table on that page:
- Size / mass: 194 × 84 × 52 mm, about 610 g
- DoF: 11 joints, 6 active
- Grip: >10 kg vertical static; >25 kg horizontal / lift
- Cycle claim: 1,000,000 no-failure cycles
- Bus: RS485 / CANFD / EtherCAT; ROS2 on Windows, Linux, macOS
- Pro tactile: 0.15–20 N fingertip range, 0.1 N resolution, ≤5 ms response
Those numbers come from a reseller listing, not the Changsha press packet. Treat them as the L1 SKU that is already being sold, not as verified factory test data.
GGII’s 2026 H1 China dexterous-hand report, cited in the launch coverage, puts 2025 China sales at about 19,200 units (+236.84% YoY) and projects 70,200 in 2026. The same report estimates 57 financing deals from 2023 through May 2026, about RMB 12.8 billion. CASBOT Hands is now based in Xiangjiang New Area, Hunan, and says it will help build a dedicated dexterous-manipulation training ground.
A Human’s Take
I like that they launched a lineup instead of one hero hand with a DoF number on the slide. L1 already has a job (play a real guitar in public), D1 and M1 have different mechanical stories, and the F-series preview is honest about still being research. The Lens manufacturing hook is the part I will watch. A $2,700 listing is real, but a million-cycle claim on a shop page is still a claim. Show me a cell where the same L1 lasts a shift without a human swapping tips.