Boston Dynamics’s next-gen humanoid robot will have Google DeepMind DNA

Robotics institution Boston Dynamics announced Monday a strategical concern with Google’s AI probe laboratory to velocity up the improvement of its next-generation humanoid robot Atlas — and marque it enactment much quality astir people.

The partnership, which was announced during the Hyundai property league astatine CES 2026, is centered connected robotics probe that volition usage Google DeepMind’s AI instauration models. Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot Atlas volition beryllium the archetypal trial case, according to Carolina Parada, elder manager of robotics astatine Google DeepMind.

“We’re looking to integrate our cutting-edge AI instauration models with Boston Dynamics’ caller Atlas robots, and we’ll purpose to make the world’s astir precocious robot instauration exemplary to fulfill the committedness of existent general-purpose quality needs,” Parada said connected stage.

The tie-up comes little than a twelvemonth aft the Google AI probe laboratory announced caller AI models called Gemini Robotics that are designed to let robots to perceive, reason, usage tools, and interact with humans. Gemini Robotics is based connected a large-scale multimodal generative AI model, Gemini. At the time, Google DeepMind said the robotics AI exemplary was trained to generalize behaviour crossed a scope of antithetic robotics hardware.

Enter Boston Dynamics, and its bulk owner, Hyundai Motor Group. While accelerating probe volition beryllium a cardinal portion of this partnership, this has real-world scaling intent.

Boston Dynamics already has products, similar the quadruped Spot, that are successful customers’ hands successful much than 40 countries. Its warehouse robot Stretch has unloaded much than 20 cardinal boxes globally since its motorboat successful 2023, according to Hyundai. Now Boston Dynamics and Hyundai are preparing for the adjacent generation, starting with the humanoid robot Atlas, which the institution announced Monday is already successful accumulation and headed to a Hyundai factory.

A prototype of Atlas walked connected signifier during the property conference, showing disconnected its quality to move. But arsenic Alberto Rodriguez, manager of Atlas behaviour astatine Boston Dynamics, noted, making “Atlas into a merchandise requires much than diversion show for humanoids to truly present connected their promise. They person to beryllium capable to interact with radical naturally.”

Rodriguez and his counterparts astatine Boston Dynamics judge that caller advancements successful AI person created a wide way to get to those capabilities.