Last August, Beijing hosted the world’s first ever robotics competition, hailed as the Olympics for robotics, where human-shaped biped robots competed in sports events.
Opening the grand show was a piano piece performed by a human pianist and a humanoid robot developed by Beijing-based start-up LinkerBot, which specialises in making dexterous hands for humanoids.
The LinkerBot robot pianist was equipped with the company’s L6 mode of dexterous hands, designed for refined and delicate operations that enable precise keystrokes comparable with those of a top human pianist.
LinkerBot has been riding the Chinese humanoid sector’s rapid growth in recent years.
Beijing-based LinkerBot has been riding the Chinese humanoid sector’s rapid growth in recent years. Photo: Handout
The global humanoid market reached 17 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) in 2025, with China accounting for half. A total of 12,000 humanoids were produced in China, a 420 per cent jump from a year earlier, according to a study by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a research facility under the industry ministry.
LinkerBot was founded in 2023 by Alex Zhou Yong, who also serves as the CEO. Zhou’s passion for robotics came from his childhood fascination with Doraemon, a robotic cat from the eponymous Japanese cartoon series who fetches all sorts of magical items from his pocket.
As a child, Zhou believed Doraemon and his pocket held the secret to such inventions, but later realised that it was the dexterity of human hands that made the inventions possible.
“From [making] pottery to [inventing] steam engines, what sets humans apart from animals … is that humans use various tools to create,” Zhou said, adding that the company was teaching robotic hands more human skills.
LinkerBot develops a broad range of dexterous hands with varying degrees of freedom, spanning three mainstream architectures – direct-drive, linkage and tendon-driven – for a wide range of clients, including South Korean giant Samsung Electronics, the University of Hong Kong and Stanford University.
Its entry-level O6 robotic hand comes with 11 degrees of freedom, while higher-end models support flexibility comparable with that of human hands and come with around 20 degrees of freedom, allowing them to perform thousands of basic movement combinations.
The O6 uses enhanced lightweight polymer and self-developed micro-reducers – ultra-compact components designed to reduce pressure – to minimise weight without compromising performance, delivering a 50kg grip payload with a weight of only 370 grams.
The company recently raised nearly 1.5 billion yuan from its series B financing round, which included domestic funds Daode Investment and Prosperity Investment as well as Singapore’s Eastern Epic Capitals.
The company planned to deploy the funds to double its research team to around 600 by the end of 2026, with many of the new hires focusing on adding more skills to the robotic hands, according to Zhou.
Zhou said the firm aimed to “build 1 million [dexterous] hands to master 1 million skills” from household to business uses to replicate human hands’ skills.
Towards that end, the company has launched LinkerSkillNet, a library designed to convert human skills, such as precision industrial operations and medical assistance procedures, into standardised, reusable skills that can be transferred to robotic hands.
Currently, LinkerSkillNet boasts around 500 skills, with Zhou expecting the robotic hand skills library to double every six months.
“Robotic hands will be able to cook, massage or do make up for you,” he said. “Essentially, you don’t just buy a pair of hands, you buy the skills they would gain over time.”
Originally written by: Ben Jiang
Source: South China Morning Post
Published on: 23 February 2026
Link to original article: From Doraemon to dexterous hands: China’s LinkerBot equips robots with human skills
