Boston Dynamics announced on Monday a strategic partnership with the artificial intelligence laboratory of Google to accelerate the development of your next humanoid robot, Atlaswith the aim of acting in a more human way in its interaction with people.
The collaboration, which was announced during the press conference of Hyundai in it CES 2026focuses on robotics research that will use artificial intelligence models from Google DeepMind. According to Carolina Paradasenior director of robotics at Google DeepMind, the Atlas robot will be the first test case of this integration.
“We are looking to integrate our cutting-edge artificial intelligence models with Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas robots, and our goal is to develop the world’s most advanced robot model to meet general human needs,” Parada said during his presentation.
This alliance comes less than a year after Google’s artificial intelligence laboratory announced new AI models called Gemini Roboticsdesigned to allow robots to perceive, reason, use tools and interact with humans. Gemini Robotics is based on a large-scale multimodal generative AI model, Gemini. At the time, Google DeepMind indicated that the AI model for robotics was trained to generalize behaviors across different robotic hardware.
The entrance of Boston Dynamics and its majority owner, Hyundai Motor Groupin this collaboration has a clear purpose: to scale research in the real world. Boston Dynamics already has products, such as the quadruped Spotwhich are used in more than 40 countries. Your warehouse robot Stretch has unloaded more than 20 million boxes globally since its launch in 2023, according to Hyundai. Now, Boston Dynamics and Hyundai are preparing for the next generation, starting with the Atlas humanoid robot, which the company announced Monday is already in production and headed to a Hyundai factory.
A prototype of Atlas walked on stage during the press conference, showing off its ability to move. However, as pointed out Alberto Rodriguezdirector of Atlas behavior at Boston Dynamics, making “Atlas a product requires more than athletic performance; humanoids must interact with people naturally.”
Rodriguez and his colleagues at Boston Dynamics believe that recent advances in AI have created a clear path to achieving those capabilities.
Quick reading
What did Boston Dynamics announce?
The company announced a collaboration with Google DeepMind to develop its Atlas humanoid robot.
Who is Carolina Parada?
She is the senior director of robotics at Google DeepMind and introduced the partnership during CES 2026.
What is Gemini Robotics?
It is a multimodal generative AI model from Google designed to allow robots to interact with humans.
What products does Boston Dynamics have?
It features the Spot quadruped robot and the Stretch warehouse robot, which has unloaded millions of boxes.
What is the objective of the collaboration?
Develop an advanced robot model that can meet human needs effectively.
