Gemini Robotics 2 drives a 22-degree-of-freedom hand on Apptronik's Apollo 2
DeepMind says the model enables full body control, demonstrated on the five-fingered SharpaWave hand mounted on Apollo 2. Twenty-two degrees of freedom in the hand alone is a different control problem from moving an arm to a position.
The degree-of-freedom count is the technical claim. Arm positioning is a solved problem with well-understood inverse kinematics. A twenty-two degree-of-freedom hand performing manipulation is high-dimensional, contact-rich control where the model must reason about force and slip rather than trajectory.
Full body control also changes the architectural story. Recent embodied models have been positioned as planners sitting above dedicated controllers. A model claiming whole-body control is reaching further down the stack, which raises the same latency and safety-guarantee questions that motivated the split in the first place.
Running on a third party's humanoid with a third party's hand is the part that makes it credible. Cross-vendor demonstrations are harder to stage than in-house ones.
The Robot Report — Google DeepMind says Gemini Robotics 2 enables full body control →