Tesollo Ships Lightweight 20-DoF Hand DG-5F-S

Tesollo’s new DG-5F-S hand arrives on the market with a bold claim: a five-finger, 20-degree-of-freedom (DoF) gripper that stays compact and light enough to ease integration across humanoid platforms. It debuted at CES 2026 and is now officially commercialized, a signal that the company believes the “hands-on” realities of real deployments are finally manageable.

The DG-5F-S is described as a refinement of Tesollo’s DG-5F-M flagship, squarely aimed at miniaturization without sacrificing manipulation performance. Engineering documentation shows the update centers on a redesigned grip mechanism driven by Tesollo’s dedicated gripper actuators, delivering finer fingertip control while trimming weight and footprint. The 20 DoF figure comes from a five-finger, multi-jointed architecture, suggesting musicianship in the hand’s planning and execution: each finger carries multiple joints to support delicate grasping, precision manipulation, and complex in-hand motions. The image accompanying the release places the DG-5F-S beside a 15-DoF variant, underscoring Tesollo’s strategy of offering a spectrum of options for different platforms and mounting constraints.

What makes this hand noteworthy isn’t just the DoF tally; it’s the emphasis on integration practicality. Tesollo stresses that the DG-5F-S is designed to slot into a range of humanoid bodies with minimal reengineering, a break from some competitors that trade flexibility for peak specs. The claim aligns with a broader industry push: more DoF and dexterity are meaningless if the hardware can’t be slapped onto existing robots without a full redesign. The technical specifications reveal a deliberate move toward a plug-and-play end effector for humanoids that must work in real-world environments—from service robots in clinics to assistive robots in homes or workplaces.

Yet the company and its public materials stop short of declaring full field readiness. Power source, runtime, and charging requirements are not disclosed in Tesollo’s commercial announcement. Without explicit numbers, practitioners must rate this as a likely mid-to-high integration product rather than a turn-key, field-tested module. In practice, a 20-DoF hand with high precision control typically compresses power budgets and thermal loads; the absence of runtime spec leaves a question mark for long shift-work in service or industrial settings.

From a readiness standpoint, the DG-5F-S situates Tesollo in a transitional zone. The product sits on the cusp of controlled-environment validation and broader market rollout. Demonstration footage shows a hand capable of nuanced manipulation, but the leap from demonstration to sustained, field-ready operation requires robust calibration, reliable long-term actuation, and compatibility testing with a variety of arm configurations and payloads. The presence of a 15-DoF variant and the DG-5F-M reference imply a tiered ecosystem, which is a sensible strategy: customers can scale from lighter, lower-DoF configurations to more dexterous, higher-DoF hands as their platform requirements grow. Still, the exact payload each version can support remains unspecified, a notable omission for systems integrators budgeting gripper strength for everyday tasks like grip-and-release of tools, fruit, or irregular objects.

For engineers and investors, a few concrete takeaways matter. First, the 20 DoF figure signals a meaningful gain in manipulation finesse versus older or simpler hands, but without payload and torque data, it’s hard to translate that into direct performance guarantees. Second, the focus on easy integration should ease platform adoption, but it will hinge on how Tesollo handles calibration, maintenance cycles, and cross-platform compatibility—areas where practical experience in the field often reveals the gaps. Third, the absence of power and run-time numbers suggests that the DG-5F-S is optimized for integration-first deployments rather than standalone, battery-powered swappable hands.

Industry watchers should monitor whether Tesollo publishes a clear payload ceiling and torque profiles in the near term. If the DG-5F-S can sustain precise grasping with a modest payload across multiple platform types, the combination of 20 DoF, compact form, and integration-friendly design could move Tesollo from demonstration reels toward reliable, real-world service.

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Tesollo commercializes its lightweight, compact robotic hand for humanoids