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ETH Zurich researchers have taught a robotic hand to use its own fingers as legs: it can crawl, steer, recover from some falls and perform limited tasks while supporting its own weight. The key idea is that the fingers do double duty as both locomotion hardware and manipulators. It is a research prototype, not a robot shown to navigate freely or available as a product.
How can a robotic hand walk on its fingers?
A conventional robot hand is carried to a worksite by an arm. This prototype instead uses the same fingers to support its body, move across a surface and interact with objects. As the researchers put it, “A walking robotic hand must use the same fingers to move its body, support its weight, and interact with the environment.”
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The work is described in the preprint “Fingers as Legs: Learning Self-Supported Locomotion and Manipulation with an Anthropomorphic Hand”, submitted to arXiv on September 15, 2026, by Amirhossein Kazemipour, Hehui Zheng and Robert Katzschmann. The team retained the hand’s finger design and position controller, then trained it to perform locomotion and interaction. The fingers are not identical in length, so the simulated model was calibrated using hardware measurements and accounted for that asymmetry.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsWhat is the “secret feature” that lets it move independently?
There is no hidden commercial feature: the hand combines fingers that can act as legs with onboard power and computing. That makes the reported demonstrations untethered and self-contained, rather than dependent on an arm carrying the hand or a cable supplying power.
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Fast Company’s September 28, 2026 report identifies a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, an inertial measurement unit and a lithium-polymer battery in the onboard pack. The preprint confirms onboard power and computation but does not specify those component models. Lead researcher Kazemipour also identified the hand as an off-the-shelf WUJI hand and said the team used NVIDIA Isaac Lab for simulation training in a September 2026 post.
What can the walking hand do?
The preprint describes distinct learned behaviors, with different feedback conditions. These are task-specific demonstrations, not evidence that one general-purpose system handles every situation on its own.
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| Demonstration | What was reported | Feedback or qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Locomotion | Untethered crawling, steering and fall recovery | The preprint describes these as learned behaviors; steering is not proof of unrestricted autonomous navigation. |
| Keyboard interaction | Successive keyboard commands while the hand supports its own weight | Performed without vision, according to the preprint abstract. |
| Object pushing | Pushing an object toward targets | Uses overhead visual feedback, according to the preprint abstract. |
In a Sokoban demonstration, Fast Company reported that the hand pressed 29 of 32 arrow-key inputs. That is a result from the reported demonstration, not a broad measure of keyboard reliability.
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Futura-Sciences reported that the prototype operated on 14 indoor and outdoor surfaces. The article also reported that it recovered in 21 of 25 tests after being placed on its side. Those figures describe the reported prototype trials; they are not a complete terrain benchmark or a general reliability rate.
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Could it work in tight spaces?
A possible future use is to have a larger robot carry the hand to a confined workspace, then let the hand operate controls or move objects before it is retrieved. That remains a proposed application, not a field deployment. The cited reporting does not demonstrate the larger robot’s deployment or automatic detachment and reconnection of the hand.
The project’s significance is therefore a design demonstration: a hand’s fingers can help it reach and balance as well as manipulate objects. It does not establish that robotic hands are ready to replace mobile robots, or that this prototype can independently explore unfamiliar environments.
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