SharpaWave Robot Becomes Blackjack Dealer at CES 2026

Sharpa, a Singapore-based robotics company, just received a CES 2026 Innovation Award in robotics for their SharpaWave, a hand that looks more like cutting-edge technology than a robotic limb. The prize capped off a stunning presentation in which the hand placed down cards in a game of blackjack like a pro, methodically sliding one card at a time from the deck with the dexterity of a card dealer.

The hand rotates and twitches in 22 various ways thanks to active degrees of freedom, and it truly gives the impression of being a human hand. Furthermore, each finger tip contains its own small camera, as well as over 1000 touch sensors, which are tiny, sensitive parts that can distinguish between a soft and hard touch. These sensors can detect forces as small as 0.005 newtons.

When the entire system is combined, the engineers at Sharpa refer to it as “visuo-tactile sensing,” which is a fancy way of stating that the hand is looking and feeling at the same time. This allows it to prevent slippage and maintain control, even when undertaking delicate work. The power behind all of this is six-dimensional force detection, which means that the hand is always receiving feedback and its fingers respond instantly to any changes. That was the technology that powered the blackjack demo, in which the hand effortlessly ripped through the deck, selecting the cards it needed and placing them on the table.

At the demo, visitors were able to step up and play simulated blackjack hands against the robot, and they saw watch the hand making judgments in real time based on all of the inputs it received. Sharpa teamed the hand with its full-body humanoid robot, North, which debuted at CES in Las Vegas this week. North was laying down blackjack hands, participating in a couple rounds of ping-pong, taking instant shots of individuals nearby, and even painstakingly folding a piece of paper into a windmill.The robot was a little stiff at times, but that’s nearly the point, because its precision was incredible to behold, especially when it went to take one card from the deck without disturbing the rest of the stack.