Flexible Humanoid Gripper for Small-Batch Manufacturing

Twenty kilograms of payload, five fingers, and teleoperation mark a new chapter in small-batch automation.

At the AW 2026 trade show, Techman Robot Korea and Tesollo unveiled a joint system that pairs a TM cobot arm with Tesollo’s evolving humanoid hand technology to tackle high-mix, low-volume production. The setup centers on a Delto gripper from Tesollo and a five-finger configuration—the DG-5F-S—on a TM arm, building on previously demonstrated teleoperation of a humanoid hand with a TM manipulator. The lineup is designed to let manufacturers handle diverse parts without retooling a traditional rigid automation cell.

Engineering documentation shows a key capability: a 20 kg maximum payload on the TM arm when paired with the Delto gripper. The fingertips and the gripper’s geometry are being marketed for adaptive grasping across varied shapes, which is essential for high-mix environments where a single production line must switch between items rapidly. Demonstration footage from AW 2026 shows a bin-picking scenario used to illustrate the system’s dexterity, with a camera mounted underneath the Delto gripper to aid teleoperation and situational awareness.

DOF counts and explicit autonomy metrics were not disclosed in the public materials accompanying the demo. The team has highlighted a blend of collaborative-robot reliability with adaptive grasping as the core premise, but the display remains in the teleoperation realm rather than autonomous manipulation. In other words, the current showcase leans on human-in-the-loop control rather than a fully autonomous, self-correcting grasp-and-place workflow.

This marks a clear improvement over earlier demonstrations that paired a humanoid hand with a TM arm but used a simpler, three-finger grasping end effector. Tesollo’s DG-5F-S five-finger gripper signals a significant step up in dexterity—the kind of end effector that can wrap around irregular geometry, adjust grip force on delicate parts, and perform more nuanced releases. The combination with Techman’s arm widens the potential payload envelope and could streamline changeovers in contract manufacturing, where markets demand both flexibility and throughput.

From a readiness viewpoint, the project appears to sit in a controlled-environment demonstration rather than field deployment. Teleoperation is a recurring theme, which implies reliable human-in-the-loop guidance is still a prerequisite for handling tasks safely and accurately in production lines. There’s no published detail on power sources, runtime, or charging requirements, which is common for a showpiece demonstration but a real question mark for anyone planning deployment in a factory that runs on continuous cycles and tight budgets. In practice, this means line managers should expect a tethered or high-maintenance power setup for now, with autonomous capability as an eventual, separate milestone.

In comparison to prior generations, the headline improvement is dexterity. A five-finger gripper on a standard TM arm, paired with a compact, camera-augmented end effector, promises improved ability to pick, reorient, and release a broader set of parts without specialization. However, the system’s current value lies more in expanded capability than ready-made autonomy. The real-proof tests—speed of changeovers, reliability across dozens of part geometries, and seamless integration with existing sensors and safety interlocks—remain to be demonstrated in production settings.

Two practitioner watchpoints emerge. First, for high-mix environments, the true test will be how quickly a line can swap between parts without re-teaching or reconfiguring tooling. Second, true deployment hinges on autonomous or near-autonomous grasping, robust perception, and predictable failure modes. Teleoperation can bridge gaps in early adoption, but factories will demand a credible path to autonomous operation, repeatable cycle times, and clear fault-recovery strategies before committing large-scale investments.

What to watch next: more transparent disclosures on DOF counts for the humanoid hand, more clarity on autonomous versus teleoperated control, and concrete field trials that quantify cycle times and setup freedom in real production lines. If Tesollo and Techman can couple the current dexterity with robust perception and safe autonomous routines, this pairing could shift the economics of small-batch manufacturing—without requiring a warehouse full of specialized robots for every part family.

Sources

Tesollo and Techman Robot unveil robot for high-mix, low-volume production