Robotics company Boston Dynamics announced Monday a strategic partnership with Google’s AI research lab to accelerate development of the next-generation humanoid robot Atlas — and make people act more human around them.
The partnership, announced during Hyundai’s press conference at CES 2026, focuses on robotics research that will use Google DeepMind’s AI-based model. Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot Atlas will be the first test case, according to Carolina Parada, senior director of robotics at Google DeepMind.
“We are looking to combine the advanced AI foundation model with Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas robot, and we will aim to develop the world’s most advanced robot foundation model to fulfill the promise of true common human needs,” Parada said on stage.
The tie-up comes less than a year after Google’s AI research lab announced a new AI model called Gemini Robotics designed 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 said that its robotics AI models were trained to generalize behavior across a variety of robotics hardware.
Enter Boston Dynamics, and its majority owner, Hyundai Motor Group. While accelerating research will be a central part of this partnership, it has real scale goals.
Boston Dynamics already has products, like the Spot quadruped, in the hands of customers in more than 40 countries. The warehouse robot Stretch has opened more than 20 million boxes worldwide 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 Hyundai factories.
The Atlas prototype walked on stage during the press conference, demonstrating its ability to move. But as Alberto Rodriguez, director of Atlas behavior at Boston Dynamics, noted, making “Atlas a product requires more than athletic performance for humanoids to really promise. They must be able to interact with people naturally.”
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Rodriguez and his colleagues at Boston Dynamics believe that recent advances in AI have created a clear path to achieving these capabilities.