After years of testing its humanoid robot (and forcing it to dance), Boston Dynamics’ Atlas is entering production. The robotics company says the final product version of the robot is being built now, and the first companies that will receive deployments are Hyundai, Boston Dynamics’ majority shareholder, and Google DeepMind, the firm’s newly minted AI partner.
This final enterprise version of Atlas “can perform a wide array of industrial tasks,” according to Boston Dynamics, and is specifically designed with consistency and reliability in mind. Atlas can work autonomously, via a teleoperator or with “a tablet steering interface,” and the robot is both strong and durable. Boston Dynamics says Atlas has a reach of up to 7.5 feet, the ability to lift 110 pounds and can operate at temperatures ranging from minus 4 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. “This is the best robot we have ever built,” Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter said in the Atlas announcement. “Atlas is going to revolutionize the way industry works, and it marks the first step toward a long-term goal we have dreamed about since we were children.”
Boston Dynamics has been publicly demoing its work on humanoid robots since at least 2011, when it first debuted Atlas as a DARPA project. Since then, the robot has gone through multiple prototypes and revisions, most notably switching from a hydraulic design to an all-electric design in 2024. Later that year, Boston Dynamics demonstrated the robot’s ability to manipulate car parts, which appears to be one of the first ways Atlas will be put to work.
Hyundai plans to use Atlas in its car plants in 2028, focused on tasks like parts sequencing. In 2030, the car maker hopes to have the robot’s responsibilities “extend to component assembly, and over time, Atlas will also take on tasks involving repetitive motions, heavy loads, and other complex operations,” Hyundai says. Google DeepMind, meanwhile, is receiving Atlas robots so it can work on integrating its Gemini Robotics AI foundation models into Boston Dynamics’ system.
