is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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Boston Dynamics unveiled the latest version of its humanoid Atlas robot Monday at CES in Las Vegas. The robot, with a glowing circle for a face and a fully electric, battery-powered body, is so advanced that it will soon be working alongside human factory workers for parent company Hyundai, the companies claimed.
Hyundai said it plans on mass-producing Atlas as “production-ready humanoid robots” that will be put to work at the automaker’s car plants, starting with the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant in Savannah, Georgia. The company estimates it will produce 30,000 robots annually starting in 2028.
The company also plans on putting the first Atlas robots to work that year “on processes with proven safety and quality benefits, such as parts sequencing.” By 2030, Hyundai says that Atlas will level up to tasks involving “repetitive motions, heavy loads, and other complex operations.” The automaker envisions a “harmonious collaboration between humans and robots,” despite widespread fears about job losses as a result of increased automation.
Boston Dynamics started as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. The company used funding from DARPA to create robots like BigDog, but is best known for the viral fame its robots have found online. Its two main stars have been Atlas, a humanoid bipedal robot that can run and do backflips, and Spot, a smaller quadrupedal “dog” that’s been tested in a variety of scenarios, from sheep herding to assisting health care workers during the pandemic.
The company started selling Spot in June 2020 for $74,500, targeting businesses looking for an automated way to patrol and inspect warehouses. Despite the viral fame, Boston Dynamics has consistently lost millions of dollars annually for a number of years.
Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics in 2021 in a deal that valued the company at $1.1 billion. The automaker has long predicted that robots will become an increasingly noticeable presence at its factories over time. And with today’s demonstration, Hyundai is hoping to prove that its robot is more advanced and more capable of performing physical tasks than rivals like Tesla’s Optimus robot. Tesla has ridden a wave of AI hype in recent years to a market capitalization of over $1 trillion, over 15 times Hyundai’s value, despite selling vastly fewer cars.
By 2030, Hyundai says that Atlas will level up to tasks involving “repetitive motions, heavy loads, and other complex operations.”
The shift for Atlas from research platform to commercial robot is certainly a significant milestone for Boston Dynamics and its parent company. It’s also likely to be an extremely costly endeavor for Hyundai to put Atlas into volume production. The companies haven’t said how much Atlas costs to manufacture, but Boston Dynamics does sell its Spot robots for around $75,000 a unit. Atlas is estimated to be hundreds of thousands of dollars more expensive.
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