Hyundai brings humanoid robot Atlas to the CES stage for the first time

Boston Dynamics, a company owned by the Hyundai car company, publicly demonstrated its humanoid robot Atlas for the first time at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. The show was an important step in the global race to create humanoid robots, which already involves Tesla and other tech giants.

During the presentation, the life-sized robot rose from the floor on its own, walked across the stage, waved to the audience and turned its head to react to its surroundings. The demonstration lasted several minutes and went off without a hitch. According to the company representatives, during the show Atlas was remotely controlled by an engineer, but in real conditions the robot is designed for autonomous movement.

When the Atlas will start running in factories

Hyundai and Boston Dynamics have announced that a production version of Atlas is already in production. The plan is to start using the robot at Hyundai's electric vehicle assembly plant in Georgia by 2028, where it will be involved in production processes.

An updated industrial version of Atlas was also shown on stage - it has a different design and is in a blue colour.

Dancing robots and partnership with Google

The presentation was opened by four Spot robots, Boston Dynamics' commercially successful "robops", who synchronously danced to a K-pop song. Spot remains the best-known product of the company, which has been developing robotics for decades.

Hyundai also announced a new partnership with Google DeepMind. Artificial intelligence from DeepMind will be used in Boston Dynamics robots. For Google, this is a return to its partnership with the company: in 2013, Google owned Boston Dynamics, but later sold it to Japan's SoftBank, with controlling interest going to Hyundai in 2021.

Why such displays are rare

Public demonstrations of humanoid robots remain rare. Manufacturers avoid live demonstrations because of the risk of technical glitches that could undermine confidence in the technology. More often, companies prefer to publish edited videos on social networks. Against this backdrop, Atlas' successful bug-free demonstration was a notable event for the industry.

The future of humanoid robots

Experts note that the rapid development of artificial intelligence and growing investments are accelerating progress in robotics. However, mass adoption of humanoid robots in homes and workplaces is still a long way off.

According to McKinsey partner Alex Panas, the key issue is the practical application of the technology. In some areas the humanoid format will be justified, in others not, but software, chips and communication systems are already forming the basis for new usage scenarios.

So far, humanoid robots are not dexterous enough to displace humans from workplaces en masse, but the debate about the impact of such technologies on the labour market will only intensify, according to experts.