Engineers have created a robotic arm that walks on its own

Researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have unveiled a six-fingered robotic hand that can detach from its manipulator and crawl independently.

If you've seen The Addams Family or Wednesday, you'll remember Thing—the autonomous hand that ran on its own. Engineers from EPFL in Switzerland have created something similar, only with far greater capabilities.

Their robotic hand can detach from its manipulator and crawl independently.

Each finger operates autonomously, and together they carry the hand to places a conventional robot couldn't reach—under furniture, behind shelves, and into tight spaces.

But that's not the point. The design is key. The developers refused to copy the human hand with its limitations. Instead, they created a symmetrical design: up to six fingers, with the outer two capable of becoming opposable thumbs. This means the hand has two thumbs—one on each side.

The fingers bend in both directions, so the hand has no fixed palm or back—it simply turns. It can carry an object on its "back" while simultaneously manipulating another. In total, the hand performs 33 types of grasping movements, just like a human's.