Sharpa North

North is a 67-DoF humanoid from Sharpa (Sharpa Pte Ltd, Singapore), built around dexterous hands with tactile sensing. The company started with the hand, which it sees as robotics' hardest problem, and wants North to work full shifts unassisted in service and industrial settings.

History and launch

Sharpa was founded in 2024. In May 2025 it introduced the Wave hand, with 22 active degrees of freedom and a proprietary tactile array; Wave entered mass production and began shipping in October 2025.

The full-body North debuted at CES 2026 in Las Vegas in January 2026. For four days, eight hours a day, it ran unscripted and without human help: ping-pong rallies with visitors, instant-camera photography, paper windmill assembly (30+ consecutive steps each) and card dealing. Sharpa says it took more than 2,000 photos and built more than 300 windmills. At the time it expected the production version in mid-2026.

Design and hardware

Sharpa lists 67 degrees of freedom for the full body but has not published height, weight or runtime. The core is the Sharpa Wave hand (now W01): human scale, 22 active DoF, 1.3 kg, up to 150 N of grip force and ±1 mm fingertip repeatability.

Its dynamic tactile array senses pressure, slip, force changes and contact location at the fingertips (up to 240 × 240 resolution at 180 fps), so the hand can adjust when an object shifts or deforms. At CES Sharpa cited hand response under 0.02 s in ping-pong and about 2 mm finger positioning precision.

Software and AI

North runs CraftNet, a hierarchical vision-tactile-language-action (VTLA) model with a planning layer (System 2), a motion layer (System 1) and a reflex layer (System 0) that closes contact in real time from touch. Sharpa's line is that the last millimeter is 90% of the challenge. In its ice cream shop work, a lightweight latent world model also predicts the next physical state.

Wave hands integrate with ROS 2, MuJoCo and Isaac Sim and the SharpaPilot SDK.

Applications and deployments

Sharpa targets hotels, retail and food service, assembly work such as screwing, clipping and fastening, and R&D data collection. In Shanghai, North worked a shift behind the counter of a DQ (Dairy Queen) store serving real customers on unmodified equipment; each Blizzard order is a 50-60 step sequence, including the signature upside-down flip. Sharpa describes it as a year-round autonomous robot restaurant running 12-hour business days.

Manufacturer

Sharpa was co-founded by Shaoqing Xiang, David Li and Kai Sun and employs more than 100 people with backgrounds in AI, autonomous driving and robotics. Besides North it sells the Wave W01 and W02 hands, the Dexa D01 and the Avatar AE01, and its hands are an option on Unitree's H2 Plus research humanoid.

Price and availability

Sharpa does not publish a price for North; inquiries go through a form on its website.

Timeline

• 2024 Sharpa founded
• 2025-05 Sharpa Wave hand with 22 DoF introduced
• 2025-10 Wave enters mass production and ships
• 2026-01 North and the CraftNet model debut at CES 2026
• 2026 North works at a DQ store in Shanghai

Sources

1. North, Sharpa (2026)
2. Sharpa Aims to "Manufacture Time" via Its CraftNet VTLA Model, and Stuns CES 2026 with Live Autonomous Demos for Fine Manipulation, Sharpa (2026-01-19)
3. Sharpa Wave W01, Sharpa (2026)
4. North at work (Sharpa x DQ), Sharpa (2026)
5. About Sharpa, Sharpa (2026)

Updated: 2026-10-10

Compared with the catalogue

• It has 67 degrees of freedom against a catalogue median of 28; more degrees of freedom usually means finer arm and hand movement.
• It is the only Sharpa model in the catalogue and one of 1 humanoids from Singapore.

Capabilities