Unified Hand Core v1.0 — A Continuous-Duty, Serviceable, Thermally-Constrained Architecture for Industrial Humanoid Manipulation

Unified Hand Core v1.0 — A Continuous-Duty, Serviceable, Thermally-Constrained Architecture for Industrial Humanoid ManipulationThis document integrates a series of February 2026 technical reports into a single systems-level architecture for continuous-duty humanoid robotic hands operating under industrial pick-and-place conditions.The central constraint identified across the suite is a distal thermal trap generated during sustained grip-hold and transport, where continuous micro-corrections concentrate heat at the smallest joints with minimal thermal mass and long conduction paths. This condition produces time-limited operation, drift, derating, and accelerated wear in high-cycle use.The architecture resolves this limitation by enforcing palm-proximal consolidation of:actuationthermal managementtendon routingfluid distributiontactile signal processingwithin a serviceable cartridge-level core, while maintaining passive distal finger structures free of heat sources and embedded electronics.The document defines:a subsystem integration mapa thermodynamically driven layout requirement rather than an optimizationa fleet-scale serviceability modelexplicit TRL-gated validation criteriafalsifiable pass/fail test protocols for continuous operationThe result is a deployment-oriented framework intended to convert dexterous humanoid hands from time-limited demonstrations into steady-state industrial tools.This record functions as the system integration reference for the associated works on:thermal bottleneck mappingproximal actuation thermal architecturepalm heat-export routingcentralized palm manifold serviceabilitycontinuous-duty tendon lifetimezero-distal-electronics tactile skinadversarial validation methodologyAll validation pathways are designed to be bench-replicable without specialized facilities.