It's been a weird year for movies. The first five months of 2024 have delivered only a few mainstream releases in films like Challengers, Dune: Part Two, The Fall Guy, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. While all garnered largely positive responses from those who saw them, several struggled to generate traction at the box office. Furiosa and The Fall Guy, in particular, performed well below their early box office expectations, despite positive reviews.

As a result, 2024 has proven to be a significantly better year for TV than film. Over the past five months, great dramas like Baby Reindeer, Shogun, X-Men '97, and Fallout have grown into breakout hits, while shows like Ripley, The Sympathizer, Monsieur Spade, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith have justifiably received some of the year’s best reviews. With this in mind, it makes sense that Disney, Warner Bros., and Amazon have bet the future of some of their biggest franchises on a trio of TV shows premiering this summer.

From the war machines in Edge of Tomorrow to the black market adaptation of Elysium to the classic power loader in Aliens, exoskeletons loom large in cinema. And they’re far from science fiction — with rudimentary rigs used for heavy loading tasks, in military applications, or for disabilities. But what we have in the real world versus what you see on the big screen is many levels down to simplicity. So how do we up the complexity of human-controlled robots? Extra thumbs might help.

Recent research, published on Wednesday in Science Robotics, suggests humans can not only handle another opposable digit — they could thrive using it.