058. Halcyon Robotics: Building the world's most dextrous hand

058. Halcyon Robotics: Building the world's most dextrous hand

From Anglofuturism by Tom Ough and Calum Drysdale

June 17, 2026 · 1h 11m · Episode 58

About this episode

The episode features a discussion with Oli and Ivor from Halcyon Robotics about the challenges and innovations in building dextrous robotic hands.

There is no King Charles III Space Station this week. There is a flat in Saffron Walden — Saf Francisco, as Calum insists on calling it — with a half-built humanoid torso left behind in California and what its makers reckon is the world’s most dextrous robot hand sitting on the table between the beers. Into the flat come Oli and Ivor of Halcyon Robotics, two Saffron Walden schoolfriends who have known each other since they were fourteen. Oli is the roboticist: cybernetics, a mechatronics degree, a master’s thesis spent trying to rebuild the most dextrous hand on earth, then a stint as a one-man army building the hands at 1X . Ivor is the convert: a chemist who taught himself to code, spent the best part of a decade as what he calls a plumber for software engineers, got absolutely shook by ChatGPT in 2022, and concluded that the only safe ground left to stand on is hardware. The thesis is simple and the engineering is not. Robotics solved walking — Spot the dog, the old Toyota machines that could just about manage the stairs, the endless parade of humanoids doing backflips — but avoided the thing that would actually make a robot useful, which is the hand. Oli’s framing is that you…

People in this episode

Hosts: Tom Ough, Calum Drysdale

Guests: Oli, Ivor

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Halcyon Robotics

Products: ChatGPT

Places: Saffron Walden, California

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