AGILINK Robot Hand Learns to Split Silk and Stitch Suzhou Embroidery

Silk bends, slips, and changes shape the moment a fingertip presses a little too hard. In Suzhou, master embroiderer Fu Xianghong spent a session teaching AGILINK’s OmniHand 3 Ultra the opening moves of a craft that runs back more than 2,500 years: separating a main silk thread into 16 finer strands, threading a needle, stretching fabric across a hoop, and putting in the first stitches. One finger teases the strands apart while the others hold tension so the thread does not collapse. For a twist, opposing fingertips stay in contact and let the silk turn without losing their grip.

Qiao Tianjie, AGIBOT’s vice president and head of AGILINK, pointed out that a single strand of silk creates a fairly distinct line between those fingertips. The OmniHand 3 Ultra fits an astonishing 21 active degrees of freedom into a hand roughly the size of a person’s, but weighing in at 630 grams. The motors are all located directly at the joints, in what is known as a direct-drive configuration, which means there is nothing between them and the joint to get in the way or slow things down. This gadget can hold a stable 3 kg and then lift up to 8 kilograms if necessary. Moving the thing takes about 0.3 seconds every cycle, and it can return to a predetermined place with an accuracy of roughly 0.2 millimeters. Each fingertip contains sensors that can detect three types of force, detect minute surface changes of only 0.08 millimeters, and distinguish between a slip and a light brush, with additional sensors spread throughout the palm and finger pads.

AGILINK began in August 2023 as a subsidiary of AGIBOT, with the goal of developing hand units for use in the company’s humanoid robots. OmniHand and the somewhat more advanced OmniHand Pro began arriving to clients in August 2025, which was when AGIBOT’s business truly took off. Twelve months later, in December 2025, they had already achieved the 1,000th hand-unit milestone. Then, in January 2026, AGILINK became an independent corporation, and within a few weeks, they had completed three successful investment rounds.

At the AGIBOT Partner Conference in April, the OmniHand 3 Lite, OmniHand 3 Ultra-T, and OmniPicker 3 were introduced. To top it off, they stated that they had captured the majority of the Chinese market for dexterous hand units in the first quarter. June brought the OmniHand 3 Ultra-M to ICRA in Vienna, where it drew everyone’s attention. To add to their good fortune, they closed a fourth investment round, raising their valuation above $1 billion. With backing from Hillhouse Ventures and Mirae Asset, it’s no surprise that Unicorn status arrived just five months later. The objective now is to increase production to 10,000 units each month.

Fast forward to today, and they’ve shipped over 15,000 dexterous hand units. Back in August 2026, the OmniHand series dominated the World Humanoid Robot Games, winning seven gold medals, four silver medals, and three bronze medals in all eight dexterous-hand competitions. They say that accuracy and control are exactly what businesses need for a number of jobs, including cable management, working with flexible materials, and manufacturing tiny precision parts, and they use a single silk thread as a baseline. Although factories are full of wire and other materials, silk thread remains the most effective means of measuring things.
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