Boston Dynamics’ upcoming humanoid robot will have Google’s DeepMind DNA

Robotics company Boston Dynamics on Monday announced a strategic partnership with Google’s Artificial Intelligence Research Lab to accelerate the development of the next generation robot Atlas — and make it behave more humane around people.

The partnership, announced during Hyundai’s CES 2026 press conference, centers around robotics research that will use core AI models from Google DeepMind. Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot Atlas will be the first test case, according to Carolina Parada, senior director of robotics at Google DeepMind.

“We look forward to integrating our cutting-edge AI models with Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas robots, and will aim to develop the world’s most advanced robot foundation model to deliver on the promise of real human needs for general purposes,” Parada said on stage.

The tie-up comes less than a year after Google’s AI research lab announced new models of artificial intelligence called Gemini Robotics that are designed to allow robots to perceive, think, use tools, and interact with humans. Gemini Robotics is based on the large-scale multimodal generative AI model, Gemini. At the time, Google DeepMind said its robotics AI model had been trained to generalize behavior across a range of different robotics devices.

Enter Boston Dynamics, and majority owner, Hyundai Motor Group. While accelerating research will be a key part of this partnership, there is an intention to expand into the real world.

Boston Dynamics already has products, like the four-legged Spot, in the hands of customers in more than 40 countries. The Stretch warehouse robot has unloaded more than 20 million boxes globally since its launch in 2023, according to Hyundai. Now Boston Dynamics and Hyundai are gearing up for the next generation, starting with the humanoid robot Atlas, which the company announced Monday is already in production and headed to the Hyundai factory.

A prototype of Atlas walked on stage during the press conference, showing off its mobility. But as Alberto Rodriguez, director of Atlas behavior at Boston Dynamics, points out, “turning Atlas into a product requires more than just athletic performance for humans to deliver on its promise. They have to be able to interact with people naturally.”

Rodriguez and his counterparts at Boston Dynamics believe that recent advances in artificial intelligence have created a clear path to achieving those capabilities.