The 27 DoF Myth - by Tom Zhang - Tom’s Substack
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Why degrees of freedom are an abstraction — and why oversimplifying the hand limits performance.
Degrees of Freedom (DoF) is an abstraction for the number of independent parameters required to define the kinematic state of a system. For any real-world system, its DoF can only ever be approximated as a finite number. When it comes to biomimetic engineering, oversimplification can quietly reduce performance. When it comes to robotic hands, the term Degrees of Freedom (DoF) gets thrown around constantly. You will hear variations such as active DoF, actuated DoF, passive DoF, total DoF. So what is DoF really, and why does it have so many versions? In classical mechanics, DoF is defined as…
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