RAPID Hand: Robust, Affordable, Perception-Integrated, Dexterous Manipulation Platfrom for Embodied Intelligence

Zhaoliang Wan, Zetong Bi, Zida Zhou, Hao Ren, Yiming Zeng, Yihan Li, Lu Qi, Xu Yang, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Hui Cheng

Keywords: Robotics; Robotic Manipulation; Embodied Intelligence; Dexterous Manipulation; Robotic Grasping

Abstract:

This paper addresses the scarcity of low-cost but high-dexterity platforms for collecting real-world multi-fingered robot manipulation data towards generalist robot autonomy.
To achieve it, we propose the RAPID Hand, a co-optimized hardware and software platform where the compact 20-DoF hand, robust whole-hand perception, and high-DoF teleoperation interface are jointly designed.
Specifically, RAPID Hand adopts a compact and practical hand ontology and a hardware-level perception framework that stably integrates wrist-mounted vision, fingertip tactile sensing, and proprioception with sub-7 ms latency and spatial alignment.
Collecting high-quality demonstrations on high-DoF hands is challenging, as existing teleoperation methods struggle with precision and stability on complex multi-fingered systems.
We address this by co-optimizing hand design, perception integration, and teleoperation interface through a universal actuation scheme, custom perception electronics, and two retargeting constraints. We evaluate the platform’s hardware, perception, and teleoperation interface. Training a diffusion policy on collected data shows superior performance over prior works, validating the system’s capability for reliable, high-quality data collection.
The platform is constructed from low-cost and off-the-shelf components and will be made public to ensure reproducibility and ease of adoption.

Primary Area: Applications (e.g., vision, language, speech and audio, Creative AI)

Submission Number: 2676