Hangzhou TorchKernel Robotics Co., Ltd. 杭州炬坤机器人有限公司
Hangzhou start-up building industrial dexterous hands; its 21-DOF TORCH HAND 1 weighs 1.1 kg and carries 40 kg peak, alongside the 480 g TORCH HAND 2.
TorchKernel Robotics (Hangzhou TorchKernel Robotics Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese start-up that develops industrial-grade dexterous hands and other robot end-effectors. It is based at 76 Longzhou North Road in Cangqian Subdistrict, Yuhang District, Hangzhou, in the core of Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City. The company sells under the TORCH brand to industrial manufacturing, research and education, and humanoid-robot customers, and calls itself a dexterous-manipulation intelligence platform. Its founder, Dong Huixu, previously led the robot perception and grasping laboratory at Zhejiang University's School of Mechanical Engineering and has worked on dexterous hands for more than ten years. Hangzhou municipal news reported in September 2026 that the company had closed a seed round of tens of millions of yuan, was preparing for mass production, and planned small-scale volume production by the end of 2026.
Products. TorchKernel's official site lists four grippers and hands, plus a tactile-sensing unit marked as coming soon.
- TORCH HAND 1 is billed as the world's first industrial five-finger dexterous hand. It has 21 degrees of freedom (16 active, 5 passive) and weighs 1,100 g. It is rated for 20 kg, with a 40 kg maximum payload, and gives 33 N of fingertip force, 110 N of static grip force and repeatability of plus or minus 0.02 mm. Its drive uses in-house coreless (hollow-cup) motors and a hybrid transmission that combines quasi-direct drive, lead screws and linkages. It runs on 24 V and draws under 300 mA static and 6 A peak. It communicates over CAN or RS485, has resistive tactile sensing on the fingertips and palm, and ships with an SDK and URDF model. The company demonstrates it in 33 scenarios, including keyboard typing, tweezer pick-up of small parts, chip placement, threading a needle, turning bottle caps, in-hand reorientation and holding a 40 kg load steady. Hangzhou press coverage described the hand as screwing in screws, plugging and unplugging wiring harnesses and picking items from cluttered piles, and called its 40 kg the highest published whole-hand payload of any dexterous hand.
- TORCH HAND 2 is a lightweight bionic five-finger hand weighing 480 g and measuring 200 x 105 x 50 mm, sized to an adult palm. It has 20 degrees of freedom (16 active, 4 passive) and scores 10 out of 10 on the Kapandji thumb-opposition test. Dual-mode piezoresistive and capacitive tactile skin gives 64 sensing units per square centimetre and 320 tactile pixels in total, with a 0 to 30 N force range, 0.01 N force resolution and 0.2 mm spatial resolution. It has been tested for more than 10,000 open-close cycles and uses EtherCAT and UART interfaces. The target uses are service robots, research and teaching, precision assembly and medical assistance, mounted on industrial arms or humanoids.
- GL-2F is an industrial two-finger gripper with a 40 kg steady-state load, a 0 to 128 mm stroke, plus or minus 0.02 mm repeatability and an open-close cycle of about 0.8 s. It has 640-pixel fingertip tactile sensing with three-axis force measurement for slip detection and material recognition, and is aimed at 3C electronics and heavy-load assembly.
- GL-3F is a three-finger adaptive hand with a 10 kg payload and plus or minus 0.2 mm repeatability. It switches between fingertip-pinch, parallel and envelope grasp modes to handle small precision parts, large structural parts and soft irregular packages without changing tools.
The company's stated focus is on hands that combine humanoid-style dexterity with industrial load ratings and durability, for use on humanoid robots and on conventional robot arms in factory assembly.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
TORCH HAND 1
Industrial five-finger dexterous hand with 21 DOF, coreless-motor hybrid drive and fingertip/palm tactile sensing; rated 20 kg, 40 kg peak payload.
TORCH HAND 2
Lightweight 480 g bionic five-finger hand with 20 DOF and 320-taxel piezoresistive/capacitive tactile skin, for humanoids, research and precision assembly.
GL-2F two-finger gripper
Industrial two-finger gripper with 640-pixel tactile fingertips and 3-axis force sensing for slip detection; 40 kg load for 3C and heavy assembly.
GL-3F three-finger hand
Three-finger adaptive industrial hand switching between pinch, parallel and envelope grasps for small parts, large parts and soft packages.
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Contact Hangzhou TorchKernel Robotics Co., Ltd.
WEBSITE
https://torchkernel.comPHONE
+86 188 6841 6618HEADQUARTERS
China
Company Facts
Founded
-
Primary Role
Component Supplier
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Asia-Pacific
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Early-Stage VC
Funding Total
-
Keywords
- Hangzhou TorchKernel Robotics Co.
- Ltd.
- 杭州炬坤机器人有限公司
- TORCH
- TorchKernel
- TORCH HAND 1
- TORCH HAND 2
- five-finger dexterous hand
- industrial dexterous hand
- two-finger gripper
- three-finger gripper
- tactile fingertip sensing
- coreless motor drive
- high-payload robot hand
- Component Supplier
- Manufacturer
- End-effector & Grasping
- Manufacturing
- Education & Research
- Assembly
