# CRAFT: A Tendon-Driven Hand with Hybrid Hard-Soft Compliance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12120 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12120/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10470/) (2021)
- [Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00177/) (2018)
- [Reconstructing Hands in 3D with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05251/) (2023)
- [Habitat 3.0: A Co-Habitat for Humans, Avatars and Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13724/) (2023)
- [Affordances from Human Videos as a Versatile Representation for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08488/) (2023)
- [EgoMimic: Scaling Imitation Learning via Egocentric Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24221/) (2024)
- [In-Hand Object Rotation via Rapid Motor Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04887/) (2022)
- [Visual Dexterity: In-Hand Reorientation of Novel and Complex Object Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11744/) (2022)
- [SONIC: Supersizing Motion Tracking for Natural Humanoid Whole-Body Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07820/) (2025)
- [Robotic Telekinesis: Learning a Robotic Hand Imitator by Watching Humans on Youtube](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10448/) (2022)
- [LEAP Hand: Low-Cost, Efficient, and Anthropomorphic Hand for Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06440/) (2023)
- [FrankMocap: Fast Monocular 3D Hand and Body Motion Capture by Regression and Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08324/) (2020)
- [Masquerade: Learning from In-the-wild Human Videos using Data-Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09976/) (2025)
- [Robotic Manipulation by Imitating Generated Videos Without Physical Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00990/) (2025)
- [ViPRA: Video Prediction for Robot Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07732/) (2025)
- [MimicDroid: In-Context Learning for Humanoid Robot Manipulation from Human Play Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09769/) (2025)
- [Dexterity from Smart Lenses: Multi-Fingered Robot Manipulation with In-the-Wild Human Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16661/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Coordination in Social Embodied Rearrangement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00087/) (2023)
- [ORCA: An Open-Source, Reliable, Cost-Effective, Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand for Uninterrupted Dexterous Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04259/) (2025)
- [Getting the Ball Rolling: Learning a Dexterous Policy for a Biomimetic Tendon-Driven Hand with Rolling Contact Joints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02453/) (2023)
- [RUKA: Rethinking the Design of Humanoid Hands with Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13165/) (2025)
- [Designing Anthropomorphic Soft Hands through Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04784/) (2023)
- [BRL/Pisa/IIT SoftHand: A Low-cost, 3D-Printed, Underactuated, Tendon-Driven Hand with Soft and Adaptive Synergies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.12655/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce CRAFT hand, a tendon-driven anthropomorphic hand with hybrid hard-soft compliance for contact-rich manipulation. The design is based on a simple idea: contact is not uniform across the hand. Impacts concentrate at joints, while links carry most of the load. CRAFT places soft material at joints and keeps links rigid, and uses rollingcontact joint surfaces to keep flexion on repeatable motion paths. Fifteen motors mounted on the fingers drive the hand through tendons, keeping the form factor compact and the fingers light. In structural tests, CRAFT improves strength and endurance while maintaining comparable repeatability. In teleoperation, CRAFT improves handling of fragile and low-friction items, and the hand covers 33/33 grasps in the Feix taxonomy. The full design costs under 600 and will be released open-source with visionbased teleoperation and simulation integration. Project page: http://craft-hand.github.io/