Fingertip Tactile Sensing

I only heard this second-hand, so I wanted to confirm. The tactile sensors
on the fingers are not electrically connected? It's not just a driver
problem?

Correct. This was a tragedy in the transition to manufacturing, and is most likely not fixable in the current (summer 2013) iteration of the hands. Our scheme for providing power and data to the finger tactile sensors over the steel mechanical tendons relied on maintaining electrical isolation between the two mechanical cables. This worked well in previous iterations of this design using plastic fingers. When we went to an all-metal design to handle the greatly increased anticipated loading environment, the 3d-printed aluminum parts had a (very) rough surface finish. This quickly caused the anodization to wear though and the isolation to fail between the mechanical cable crimp and the finger link structures. Attempts at mitigating this through the addition of thin steel wires failed due to similar issues as they scraped across the very rough surface finish. Overcoming these issues will likely require a redesign of several mechanical features or a different material selection for the finger links, such as machined Delrin.