Hyundai and Boston Dynamics unveil humanoid robot Atlas at CES
[January 06, 2026] By
MATT O'BRIEN
Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics publicly demonstrated its humanoid robot
Atlas for the first time Monday at the CES tech showcase, ratcheting up
a competition with Tesla and other rivals to build robots that look like
people and do things that people do.
“For the first time ever in public, please welcome Atlas to the stage,”
said Boston Dynamics' Zachary Jackowski as a life-sized robot with two
arms and two legs picked itself up from the floor at a Las Vegas hotel
ballroom.
It then fluidly walked around the stage for several minutes, sometimes
waving to the crowd and swiveling its head like an owl. An engineer
remotely piloted the robot from nearby for the purpose of the
demonstration, though in real life Atlas will move around on its own,
said Jackowski, the company’s general manager for humanoid robots.
The company said a product version of the robot that will help assemble
cars is already in production and will be deployed by 2028 at Hyundai's
electric vehicle manufacturing facility near Savannah, Georgia.
The South Korean carmaker holds a controlling stake in
Massachusetts-based Boston Dynamics, which has been developing robots
for decades and is best known for its first commercial product: the
dog-like robot called Spot. A group of four-legged Spot robots opened
Hyundai's event Monday by dancing in synchrony to a K-pop song.
Hyundai also announced a new partnership with Google's DeepMind, which
will supply its artificial intelligence technology to Boston Dynamics
robots. It's a return to a familiar partnership for Google, which bought
Boston Dynamics in 2013 before selling it to Japanese tech giant
SoftBank several years later. Hyundai acquired it from SoftBank in 2021.
It's rare for leading robot makers to publicly demonstrate their
humanoids, in part because fumbles attract unwanted attention — such as
when one of Russia's first humanoids fell on its face in November.
Robotics startups typically prefer to show off their research prototypes
in videos on social media, offering them the opportunity to show the
machines at their best and edit out their failings.
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Humanoid application product lead at Boston Dynamics, Aya Durbin,
left, and vice president and general manager of Atlas at Boston
Dynamics, Zachary Jackowski, talk during a Hyundai and Boston
Dynamics news conference ahead of the CES tech show, Monday, Jan. 5,
2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
 At the end of Monday's live Atlas
demonstration, which appeared flawless, the humanoid prototype swung
its arms in a theatrical gesture to introduce a static model of the
new product version of Atlas, which looked slightly different and
was blue in color.
Crossover excitement from the commercial AI boom and new technical
advances have helped pour huge amounts of money into robotics
development, though many experts still think it's a long time before
truly human-like robots that can perform many different tasks take
root in workplaces or homes.
“I think the question comes back to what are the use cases and where
is the applicability of the technology,” said Alex Panas, a partner
at consultancy McKinsey who helped lead a CES robotics panel that
attracted hundreds of people earlier in the day. “In some cases, it
may look more humanoid. In some cases, it may not."
Either way, Panas said, “the software, the chipsets, the
communication, all the other pieces of the technology are coming
together, and they will create new applications.”
Humanoids don’t yet have enough dexterity to threaten many human
jobs, though a debate over their effects on employment is likely to
grow as they become more skilled. The same Georgia plant where
Hyundai plans to test out Atlas was the site of a federal
immigration raid last year that led to the arrests of hundreds of
workers, including more than 300 South Korean citizens.
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