Robotics
Whole-body dexterity
Definition
Whole-body dexterity is the ability to manipulate objects using coordinated contacts across the robot's hands, arms, torso, and other body surfaces rather than relying only on an end-effector grasp. The term has emerging research use and should not be taken to imply general autonomy or human-level dexterity.
Also known as: WBD
Updated
Use the body as a manipulation surface
Conventional dexterous manipulation concentrates contact at fingers or a gripper. Whole-body dexterity includes bracing, sliding, trapping, carrying, and regrasping against the forearms, torso, or other appendages. The robot must coordinate object motion with balance, self-collision avoidance, and changing contacts.
Mc Gartoll and colleagues introduce the label and a specific framework in their 2026 Whole-Body Dexterity preprint. Their pipeline generates feasible whole-body grasps in simulation, trains reinforcement-learning experts for object repositioning, and distils them into one policy using proprioception and object geometry.
Extend control beyond hands and feet
Whole-body control coordinates many robot joints and tasks, including balance and end-effector motion. Whole-body dexterity names a manipulation capability in which the extra body surfaces actively constrain and move the object. The concepts can be combined, but neither term implies the other.
The cited authors report zero-shot transfer to a Unitree G1 for repositioning a basketball and box, plus a teleoperator-steered task that stows, carries, and places a box. They report 90 per cent completion across their real-world task set versus 18 and 4 per cent for two baselines. Those figures describe the paper's trials and coarse-reference interface, not autonomous performance on arbitrary objects.
More contact creates more ways to fail
Torso and arm contacts can increase support area for large objects, but they also create pinch, impact, and self-collision hazards. Object pose, friction, compliance, and contact force may be harder to observe away from instrumented hands. Clothing, cable covers, and joint limits can change the usable contact geometry.
The demonstrated policy does not by itself provide task planning, object selection, human-safety reasoning, or recovery from every dropped contact. Wider evidence needs varied shapes, masses, materials, disturbances, autonomous references, and independent physical evaluation. Until then, whole-body dexterity is best read as a specific capability goal and emerging method family.
Sources
Related terms
Dexterous manipulation
Dexterous manipulation uses coordinated, controllable contacts to perform precise or varied object motions, often with a multi-fingered robot hand. It includes tasks such as reorienting an object within the hand, changing grasps, and using tools.
Whole-body control
Whole-body control coordinates a robot’s joints and contacts to satisfy several motion and force objectives together. In humanoids, it commonly combines balance, foot motion, hand tasks, and posture subject to physical constraints.
Contact-rich manipulation
Contact-rich manipulation is robotic manipulation in which making, maintaining, breaking, or sliding contacts is central to completing the task. The robot must reason about forces and changing contact modes, not only collision-free motion.
Non-prehensile manipulation
Non-prehensile manipulation changes an object's motion or pose without maintaining a stable grasp around it. Common modes include pushing, sliding, rolling, pivoting, tossing, and using environmental contact.
Humanoid robot
A humanoid robot is a robot with a body arranged to resemble the human form, usually with a torso, arms, and legs. The term describes its physical form and does not by itself establish human-level intelligence or general autonomy.