The live debut — paired with a new partnership with Google’s DeepMind to supply artificial intelligence to Boston Dynamics robots — signals accelerating commercial ambition in the humanoid robotics sector, even as analysts caution that widespread workplace deployment remains years away.
Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics gave its humanoid robot Atlas its first-ever public demonstration Monday at the CES technology showcase in Las Vegas, putting a life-sized, two-armed machine through its paces before a crowd and sharpening a race with Tesla and other rivals to build robots capable of human-like tasks.
“For the first time ever in public, please welcome Atlas to the stage,” said Zachary Jackowski, Boston Dynamics’ general manager for humanoid robots, as the robot picked itself up from the floor of a hotel ballroom and walked around the stage for several minutes, waving to the crowd and swiveling its head.
An engineer remotely piloted the robot during the showcase. In real-world use, Atlas will move around on its own, Jackowski said.
Deployment planned for Hyundai’s Georgia EV plant
Boston Dynamics said a product version of Atlas is already in production and will be deployed by 2028 at Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing facility near Savannah, Georgia, where it will help assemble cars.
Hyundai, the South Korean automaker, holds a controlling stake in Massachusetts-based Boston Dynamics, which it acquired from Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank in 2021. Google had purchased Boston Dynamics in 2013 before selling it to SoftBank. The company has developed robots for decades and is best known for Spot — a dog-like, four-legged robot and its first commercial product. A group of Spot robots opened Hyundai’s CES event by dancing in synchrony to a K-pop song.
Google’s DeepMind returns as an AI partner
Hyundai also announced a new partnership with Google’s DeepMind to supply artificial intelligence to Boston Dynamics robots, reviving a connection that predates SoftBank’s and Hyundai’s successive ownership of the company.
Analysts urge caution on timeline
Despite the commercial momentum, industry analysts cautioned against overstating how quickly humanoid robots will reshape workplaces.
“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. “In some cases, it may look more humanoid. In some cases, it may not.”
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 do not yet have enough dexterity to threaten many human jobs, though a debate over their effects on employment is likely to grow as the machines become more skilled.
Live demos remain rare in the industry
It is rare for leading robot makers to publicly demonstrate their humanoids. Robotics startups typically prefer to show prototypes in edited videos posted to social media, giving them the opportunity to highlight the machines at their best and omit failures — as when one of Russia’s first humanoids fell on its face in November.
Monday’s Atlas demonstration appeared flawless. At its conclusion, the prototype swung its arms in a theatrical gesture to introduce a static model of the product version of Atlas, which looked slightly different and was blue in color.
Plant context: immigration raid in 2025
The Georgia facility where Hyundai plans to test Atlas carries additional context. The same plant was the site of a federal immigration raid in 2025 that led to the arrests of hundreds of workers, including more than 300 South Korean citizens.