What makes a robot hand ready for real work?

Boston Dynamics has redesigned Atlas’s hand around some unglamorous tradeoffs: 13 degrees of freedom, no pinky, direct actuators, and parts meant to be replaced without a delicate cable system. IEEE Spectrum reports the earlier hand was never intended for production at the scale Boston Dynamics now has in mind. The demo will be a robot changing a drill bit. The buyer’s question comes later, when a joint has taken a beating: does that become a technician’s quick repair, a lost shift, or an expensive reason to park the robot? That is why the missing pinky matters. Human-like is a nice photo brief. A worksite needs a hand that can use tools and be fixed without turning a broken finger into a research project. What repair proof would you ask for before trusting a robot hand on a real shift?