HeymanDex, a Hangzhou dexterous-hand startup founded in July 2025, has built its first commercial product for a job almost no other robot hand targets: working underwater. The WA100 is a multi-fingered robotic hand rated for 300 meters in its standard form, with a deep-sea engineering edition customizable from 100 to 10,000 meters, and it is designed to replace the simple two-jaw claws that subsea vehicles have used for decades. That focus is a deliberate split from the rest of the industry, which is building hands for land-based humanoids. TechNode reported on November 13, 2026 that HeymanDex — also known as Heyman Tech, based in Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City — picked the water because its founding team came from deep-sea engineering rather than humanoid robotics.
Table of Contents
- What the WA100 actually is
- Why the team's deep-sea background matters here
- Who this changes work for
- The rest of the catalogue, and the money behind it
- What a buyer should verify before committing
- Frequently Asked Questions
What the WA100 actually is
A dexterous hand, in robotics, means an end effector with multiple independently driven fingers, as opposed to a gripper that opens and closes along one axis. HeymanDex lists the WA100 at 16 degrees of freedom — 16 independently controllable joint motions — with a load rating of at least 24 kg. It can also reconfigure between a dexterous-hand form and an industrial-gripper form, so one unit covers both fine manipulation and brute holding. The underwater build is where the engineering money goes.
The company specifies a titanium body with fluororubber seals, materials chosen for seawater corrosion resistance and pressure tolerance rather than weight savings. HeymanDex states the hand completed 500,000 durability test movements without damage. The 300-meter standard rating is the important number for most buyers. That depth covers coastal infrastructure, port work, aquaculture and shallow salvage. The 100-to-10,000-meter customization range is a build-to-order path, not a shelf product.
Why the team's deep-sea background matters here
Sealing a multi-jointed mechanism against pressure is a different discipline from making fingers move precisely in air. Every joint is a potential leak path, and ambient pressure at 300 meters is roughly 30 times atmospheric. HeymanDex's team previously built 8,000-meter-class deep-sea landers and the sampling equipment carried by Jiaolong, China's crewed research submersible.
Jiaolong is a credible pedigree to cite. The Chinese government reported in August 2024 that the submersible, rated beyond 7,000 meters, had completed its 300th dive since its 2009 maiden mission. Sampling equipment that survives those dives is built to a standard that most robot-hand suppliers have never had to meet. The practical read: this is a subsea equipment team applying its sealing and materials knowledge to a new end effector, not a humanoid-hand company adding a waterproof variant.
Who this changes work for
The current tool on most remotely operated vehicles is a hydraulic claw — strong, reliable, and capable of exactly one grasp shape. Changing what an ROV can hold usually means surfacing and swapping the attachment.
HeymanDex points at underwater engineering, marine research, archaeology and rescue as the affected fields. A multi-fingered, pressure-rated hand collapses several of those trips into one dive: The value is dive time, which is the expensive resource in subsea work. Vessel day rates and weather windows, not the hardware, usually set the budget.
- Grip a hand tool by its handle, then release it and pick up a sample, without a tool change
- Handle irregular or fragile objects — archaeological artifacts, biological samples — that a two-jaw claw crushes or drops
- Switch to gripper mode for high-load tasks on the same deployment
- Keep one spares and training path for crews instead of a rack of single-purpose attachments
The rest of the catalogue, and the money behind it
The WA100 is one of three dexterous hands HeymanDex now lists, alongside the IN100 and RE100, across lines aimed at deep sea, humanoids, research and industry. The WA100 was shown at IFA in Berlin and the company has pushed its products onto the international conference circuit rather than keeping them domestic. HeymanDex also co-developed the Dasheng 1 (SG100) with Leju Robotics, a reconfigurable hand that switches among dexterous, long-stroke, four-finger and opposing-finger gripping modes with no tool change. Robotic Gizmos lists the Dasheng 1 at 11 active degrees of freedom, a hook-grip capacity of at least 24 kg (53 lb) and repeatability of 0.03 mm or better.
It was shown at IROS. Funding has been fast. Gasgoo reported that a round of tens of millions of yuan announced June 1, 2026 was the company's third that year and seventh since founding, bringing disclosed funding to nearly RMB 100 million. Dongfang Precision, Leju Robotics, Yida Capital and 01 Ventures are among the named investors — Leju being both investor and development partner.
What a buyer should verify before committing
Every performance figure in this article comes from the company. The depth ratings, the 500,000-cycle durability result, the 24 kg load and the 0.03 mm repeatability are all vendor-supplied, with no published third-party test data behind them. For a component that fails expensively and inaccessibly, that is the gap to close before a purchase.
The published degree-of-freedom counts are also inconsistent across sources: HeymanDex's own page lists the WA100 at 16 DOF, while secondary coverage quotes the Dasheng 1 at 11 active DoF. Total mechanical degrees of freedom and independently actuated degrees of freedom are different specifications, and the difference decides what grasps a hand can actually form. Ask which number applies to the unit you are quoting. Practical checks before an order:.
- Request the pressure test protocol behind the 300-meter rating — chamber cycles, duration and hold temperature
- Ask whether the 500,000-cycle durability test ran dry, submerged, or under load
- Confirm the actuated DoF count for your specific configuration, in writing
- Specify a seawater immersion and corrosion history for the titanium and fluororubber combination, not just the materials list
- Price the deep-sea edition separately; a 10,000-meter build is a different product from the 300-meter standard
Frequently Asked Questions
How deep can the WA100 go?
The standard configuration is rated to 300 meters. A deep-sea engineering edition is offered in pressure-rated customizations from 100 to 10,000 meters.
Can it replace an ROV's existing gripper outright?
It can switch between a dexterous-hand form and an industrial-gripper form, so it covers both roles. Whether it replaces a hydraulic claw depends on your load profile against its stated 24 kg rating.
Is HeymanDex the same company as Heyman Tech?
Yes. The company is based in Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City and was founded in July 2025.
