Dexterity is a battery problem before it's an AI problem — unless you let the gripper's body do the thinking. US11565406B2 ("Multi-tentacular soft robotic grippers") and US11685058B2 ("Soft robotic tentacle gripper"), both granted to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in 2023, take that route.
The B25J filing tells a different story than the keynote. Classified under B25J 15/12, B25J 9/1612 and B25J 15/10, the soft tentacle gripper grasps not by computing finger positions precisely but by wrapping compliant tentacles around an object until they conform. The mechanism does the adapting that, in a rigid hand, the controller would have to compute.
Here is the philosophical split this patent dramatizes. The rigid-hand camp — the one most humanoids belong to — puts intelligence in control: precise joints, precise sensing, precise planning. The soft-robotics camp puts intelligence in mechanics: a body so compliant that a crude command produces a good grasp because the material conforms to whatever it meets.
The honest trade is precision for robustness. A soft tentacle gripper will happily grab an irregular, fragile or unfamiliar object that would defeat a rigid hand's grasp planner — but it cannot perform fine, positioned manipulation the way articulated fingers can. You buy forgiveness and lose finesse.
This is not a fringe idea; it is a serious counter-bet to the dexterous-humanoid-hand orthodoxy. For a lot of real picking — produce, soft goods, mixed bins — 'conform and hold' beats 'compute and pinch,' and the soft-gripper patents are the IP behind that argument.
For readers auditing manipulation, the soft-gripper case widens the lens. The question is not only how many fingers and how many degrees of freedom, but whether the design puts its intelligence in software or in the gripper's own compliant body. Both can be right; the patent reveals which bet the engineer made.