Atlas

In a major industry shift, Milan Kovac—the engineer who helped birth Tesla’s Optimus—has moved to Boston Dynamics. The hire signals a decisive pivot for Hyundai’s robotics firm as it transitions from viral research to industrial scale.

Boston Dynamics sheds its R&D skin at CES 2026, unveiling a production version of the all-electric Atlas designed for "automotive volumes." With 56 degrees of freedom, an "alien" morphology, and a deep Google DeepMind partnership, the company is finally moving from viral videos to the assembly line.

In a candid new discussion, leaders from the Atlas team detail the "bitter lessons" of hardware reliability, the internal debate over legs versus wheels, and why automotive manufacturing is the ultimate "manipulation complete" test for AI.

In a recent interview, Atlas Product Management Lead Mario Bollini discusses the strategic shift to electric actuators, the embrace of reinforcement learning, and why the humanoid form factor is about turning physical challenges into software solutions.

In a new video, Boston Dynamics engineers explain the design philosophy behind the electric Atlas's three-fingered grippers, emphasizing a pragmatic balance of dexterity, reliability, and simplified complexity for real-world manipulation.