Advanced Bionic Hands for Humans and Robots with Aadeel Akhtar, CEO at Psyonic

In this talk

1. 0:53

   One hand for people and robots

   Psyonic designs its Ability Hand for use by both human prosthetic users and robots. Akhtar says people’s experience using the hand can help teach robots new tasks, pointing to a NASA demonstration where a user managed a wall zipper the robot had struggled with. He says the hand is in use with nearly 300 patients and more than 50 robotics organizations, including NASA, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Mercedes.

2. 2:51

   Control, touch, and repair

   Akhtar demonstrates button control, while user Dale DeMasi describes operating the hand through muscle signals for daily activities, sports, and household tasks. Touch sensors in the fingers can send haptic feedback when an object is grasped or released. For robots, an open API provides finger position, speed, torque, and sensor data; the hand is designed to withstand impacts, and a damaged finger can be replaced in about 10 minutes.

3. 6:32

   Applications across work and research

   Examples range from cooking and laundry to warehouse sorting and automotive assembly. Akhtar describes Mercedes using the hand on an Apptronik Apollo robot and a Berkeley study comparing a multi-fingered hand with parallel-jaw grippers on tasks such as handling cylinders and cooking. He also announces a Universal Robots integration through URcap and PolyScope X.

4. 11:42

   Training robots from human use

   Akhtar calls Psyonic’s approach real-to-real transfer: a person uses the same type of hand as the robot to demonstrate a task, and that data can train the robot. As an example, Dale used the hand to serve mashed potatoes, and the team trained a Unitree G1 robot to repeat the action. Psyonic has a $2.6 million Department of Defense grant to develop nerve implants for finger control and touch feedback, with the goal of collecting more training data.

5. 14:00

   Access and future direction

   Akhtar shares how user Jamie Grochong, who lost his hand in a fireworks accident, returned to baseball with the Ability Hand. He says the device typically costs $10,000 to $20,000 depending on insurance, with a future target below $5,000 per hand at higher volumes. Psyonic is raising a Series A to expand production, develop new hands and arms, and build its robot training data efforts.