Sharpa Robotics Ramps Up Mass Production of "Vision-Based" Tactile Hand

Sharpa Robotics has officially shifted its flagship dexterous hand, the SharpaWave, into mass production, aiming to supply the burgeoning general-purpose robot market with hardware capable of human-level manipulation.

The Singapore-headquartered company, which first teased the hand's release in October, announced this week that it has deployed automated testing systems to validate the durability of the thousands of microscale gears and motors inside the device.

In a statement to Humanoids Daily, the company clarified that while initial shipping commenced in October, the manufacturing lines have now scaled to a "rolling production process". This ramp-up comes just weeks before Sharpa is set to showcase the hardware as an Innovation Awards Honoree at CES 2026 in Las Vegas.

"Feeling by Seeing"

The SharpaWave is entering a competitive sector of the robotics market. However, Sharpa is betting on a high-fidelity sensory architecture to distinguish its product.

According to the company, the hand utilizes a "Dynamic Tactile Array" (DTA) that essentially allows the robot to "feel by seeing". Each fingertip houses a miniature camera and over 1,000 tactile pixels. This visuo-tactile setup reportedly enables a pressure sensitivity of 0.005 N, allowing the hand to detect feather-light contact or manipulate heavy loads with equal precision.

Combined with 22 active degrees of freedom (DOF) and a 6-dimensional force sensing capability, the system is designed to handle complex tasks ranging from cracking eggs to operating industrial tools.

New Details on Repairability

For research labs and industrial users, the durability of high-complexity hands is often a greater concern than raw performance. A 22-DOF hand with thousands of parts presents a significant maintenance risk if a single actuator fails.

Addressing these concerns, a Sharpa spokesperson confirmed to Humanoids Daily that the SharpaWave features a modular design. Crucially, individual fingers can be replaced independently, a feature intended to reduce system downtime and repair costs compared to unibody designs that require full-unit replacements for localized damage.

The company also emphasized its new reliability rigs, which are currently validating the endurance of the hand's electromechanical components to ensure "mission-critical" consistency comparable to automotive systems.

Ecosystem and Availability

To speed up integration for developers, Sharpa is shipping the hand with an open-source software stack. The accompanying SharpaPilot application supports major simulation environments including NVIDIA's Isaac Gym and Isaac Lab, PyBullet, and MuJoCo.

While the technical specifications and production status are now clear, commercial details remain opaque. Sharpa has declined to comment on specific pricing tiers or publish specific Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) statistics at this stage.

Sharpa will be at CES 2026, booth 9251 in the North Hall, from January 6–9.

For current Wave and Wave SE specifications, tactile sensing and software, see our Sharpa Wave hand guide.