TECHNOLOGY n 19 www.drivesncontrols.com February 2026 THE AMERICAN ROBOT DEVELOPER Boston Dynamics has started volume manufacturing of its Atlas electric humanoid robot and unveiled a new production version at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) In the US. All of the robots that it makes this year will go to Boston Dynamics’majority shareholder, the Korean car-maker Hyundai, and to Google Deepmind, with which the robot-maker has formed an AI partnership. BD plans to start selling its humanoids to other customers in 2027 with the aim of producing 30,000 machines per year by 2028. The Atlas robot was first announced in 2024 and marked a shift away from the hydraulically-powered humanoids that BD had built previously. The new robot has 56 degrees of freedom and most of its joints can rotate through 360 degrees, allowing it to perform manoeuvres – such as rotating its head and body to point in the opposite direction – that no human could do, saving time in practical applications. The ability to rotate freely in this way has been achieved by eliminating the wiring that usually restricts the movements of such joints. Instead of having to take several steps to change its direction of movement, the new robot can simply swivel its torso and head to move in a new direction. The 1.9m-tall robot can lift up to 50kg and has a 2.3m reach. It is IP67protected, allowing it to be washed down, and it can operate in temperatures from –20°C to +40°C. To ensure safety, it has 360-degree camera coverage and can detect the presence of humans. Its “hands” incorporate tactile sensors. The robot is powered by a pair of swappable batteries that the robot can replace automatically when they are running low, potentially allowing almost continuous 24/7 operation. It can operate autonomously, via remote telecontrol, or by using a tablet steering interface. Atlas is designed to perform a wide array of industrial tasks, from materialhandling, assembly and machinetending, to order fulfilment. It learns new tasks quickly – typically in less than a day. It adapts to dynamic environments, lifts heavy loads, and works autonomously with minimal supervision. Once an Atlas robot has learned a new task, it can be replicated immediately across an entire fleet of robots. “Atlas is the most production-friendly robot we’ve ever designed,”says Atlas general manager, Zack Jackowski. “This generation of Atlas significantly reduces the amount of unique parts in the robot, and every component has been designed for compatibility with automotive supply chains. With Hyundai Motor Group’s backing, we will achieve the best reliability and economies of scale in the industry.” Under its new partnership with Google DeepMind, BD plans to integrate cutting-edge AI foundation models into Atlas, giving the robot greater cognitive capabilities. Hyundai’s Mobis business will supply the actuators for Atlas, and BD will work with Hyundai to accelerate the pace of actuator development and production. The new production line in Boston is designed to create up to 1,000 Atlas robots a year, and there plans to expand production to 30,000 machines per year by 2028, possibly in a new plant near Hyundai’s EV plant in Georgia. The first practical applications for the new robot will be for parts sequencing at Hyundai and Kia factories, with final assembly tasks being added by 2030. Later this year, Hyundai plans to open a Robot Metaplant Application Centre (RMAC) in the US designed to act as the “engine” of its AI Robotics business, where robots will learn human collaboration by mapping movements such as lifts, turns, and recoveries into precision training for repetitive and complex tasks. By 2028, RMAC-trained Atlas robots will be deployed for repetitive sequencing tasks, progressing to complex assembly work by 2030. Over time, Atlas will take on tasks involving repetitive motions, heavy loads, and other complex capabilities – ensuring safer working environments for factory employees. As the robot’s performance is validated, the car-maker aims to adopt it across entire production sites. Hyundai plans to build 30,000 electric humanoids per year A NORWEGIAN optics specialist has teamed up with a US imaging developer to offer a Raspberry-Pi-based platform that allows machine vision designers to evaluate high-speed, constant field-of-view focusing functions quickly and easily on existing computing platforms. Historically, machine vision OEMs have had to rely on fixed-focus cameras with small apertures to achieve sufficient depthof-focus, limiting their applications. Norway-based poLight ASA and US-based Image Quality Labs (IQL) say that their “cost-competitive” Pi TLens Studio evaluation and development platform will allow OEMs to rapidly ramp up machine vision applications with constant field-ofview focusing. The platform uses poLight’s TLens tunable optics technology, which is already replicates the behaviour of the human eye in devices such as smartphones, barcode scanners and medical equipment. The patented technology is said to offer benefits such as extremely fast focussing (around 1ms), a small footprint, immunity to magnetic interference, low power consumption (around 1mW), and a constant field-of-view. The evaluation kit allows developers to test the performance of the TLens technology, integrate it with their existing software stacks, and accelerate cameradriven innovation in industrial automation, robotics, edge AI and inspection systems. In machine vision applications, the technology will allow engineers to set and change object/focal distances rapidly to accommodate different scenarios. Designed around the Raspberry Pi 5 and an M12 optical architecture, the platform will initially support TLens-enabled camera modules using Sony IMX462 and IMX900 image sensors, which support low-light, high-speed applications. www.polight.com Boston Dynamics’ all-electric Atlas robots have now entered volume production Plug-and-play platform will speed up development of vision applications
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