Using the dexterous hand in practice#

Tutorial

With the asset structure verified, collision pairs filtered, and joint parameters tuned, the Inspire Hand in Isaac Sim is stable and ready for downstream use.

Learning Objectives#

In this tutorial, you will:

  • Review what you accomplished across the OpenUSD and Tuning Best Practices series.

  • Learn next steps for using the tuned Inspire Hand (attach to an arm, watch demos, fine tune, extend to other hands).

  • Find additional documentation and resources for PhysX and articulation.

Prerequisites#

What You Accomplished#

  • Tutorial 1 — You learned URDF links and joints, imported the Inspire Hand, and examined the USD Asset Structure 3.0 file hierarchy, including nested rigid-body prims and the flat joint scope.

  • Tutorial 2 — You enabled the joint visualizer, reviewed the kinematic chain in Robot Inspector, and verified collision meshes.

  • Tutorial 3 — You used the Robot Self-Collision Detector to identify self-collisions and added filtered pairs.

  • Tutorial 4 — You set maximum joint torque and velocity from the hardware specifications.

  • Tutorial 5 — You tuned drive stiffness and damping with Gain Tuner and analyzed the resulting charts.

You now have a tuned, stable robotic hand USD that can be attached to an arm and used with a grasping controller in Isaac Sim or Isaac Lab.

Next Steps#

  • Attach to an arm — Use the hand as an end effector on a manipulator, such as Kuka, in Isaac Sim or Isaac Lab. Then run grasping or manipulation tasks.

Watch: Tuned Inspire Hand simulation and grasping demonstration.

  • Watch applied demos — Explore Isaac Lab Kuka and Inspire Hand demonstrations to see the hand in complete workflows.

  • Fine-tune simple contact scenes — Bring the hand into simple scenes that include contact, then tune mimic-joint compliance as needed for realistic and stable behavior.

  • Extend tuning — Apply the same collision-filtering, drive-limit, stiffness, and damping workflow to other digits or custom dexterous hands.

Additional Resources#

Summary#

This tutorial reviewed the completed import, inspection, collision filtering, and gain-tuning workflow. You can now use the tuned Inspire Hand in grasping workflows and apply the same process to other robot assets.

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