Would a walking robot hand feel helpful or unsettling?

A hand crawling across a table is an excellent October story. I'm less sure I'd want it approaching my coffee. ETH Zurich researchers made a commercial robotic hand walk on its fingertips. IEEE's report makes the obvious Addams Family comparison, then describes proposed uses in cramped industrial spaces and search and rescue. Those are possible applications, not deployed services. The same image can help you explain the research and make the eventual tool harder to welcome. ‘Thing’ comes with a personality already attached. A maintenance worker may just want a small machine that reaches a control, without the suggestion that a severed hand has decided to investigate. That is my reading of the presentation, not a finding about people's reactions. I wouldn't hide the odd shape. I'd show where it belongs: the inaccessible gap, the control inside it, and the person who otherwise has to squeeze in there. The cube-pushing experiment used an overhead camera, so that scene still needs proving outside the lab. Would seeing the intended job change how you felt about the hand, or would you still prefer a small robot that looked less like part of a person?