The Pisa/IIT SoftHand is a simple, robust and effective hand designed for grasping and soft manipulation

Simple because only one motor actuates the whole hand;
Robust because innovative, biomorphic joint design allows perfect recoversing after large deformations and even disarticulation;
Effective thanks to the soft-synergy idea applied to 19 degrees of freedom

The idea at the core of the Pisa/IIT SoftHand, i.e. soft synergies, comes from the combination of natural motor control principles. As a result the hand pose is not predetermined, but depends on the physical interaction of its body with the environment, allowing to grasp a geat variety of objects despite its single degree of actuation.

Simplicity, robustness, lightness and effectiveness make the Pisa/IIT SoftHand ideal for both humanoid robotics and prosthetics.

The Pisa/IIT SoftHand is an open hardware project under the umbrella of thye Natural Machine Motion Initiative.

A commercial version of the hand, the qbhand, is produced by a spinoff of Centro Piaggio and IIT, qbrobotics srl. 

A recent improvement, the Pisa/IIT Softhand 2, is actuated by two motors for to perform not only grasping, but also complex manipulations on objects.

Winner of the Best paper Award at Humanoids 2012: "Adaptive Synergies for a Humanoid Hand", M. G. Catalano G.Grioli A. Serio E. Farnioli C. Piazza A. Bicchi

Best Poster Award @EuroHaptics 2014: "A change in the fingertip contact area induces an illusory displacement of the finger", Alessandro Moscatelli, Matteo Bianchi, Alessandro Serio, Omar Al Atassi, Simone Fani, Alexander Terekhov, Vincent Hayward, Marc Ernst and Antonio Bicchi.

Best Interactive paper award at Humanoids 2015 "Dexterity augmentation on a synergistic hand: the Pisa/IIT SoftHand+", C. Della Santina, G. Grioli, M. Catalano, A. Brando, A. Bicchi .

UNIPI team Finalist at the Amazon Picking Challenge

Winner of Robotics Grasp and Manipulation Challenge at IROS 2016

Finalist at Cybathlon 2016

Projects:The Hand Embodied,SoftHands, WearHap, SOMA, SoftPro