When a video or a specification mentions Atlas, it could mean one of three machines. Boston Dynamics retired its hydraulic research robot and introduced an electric prototype in April 2024, then unveiled a product version in January 2026. Specifications, demos and claims from one do not automatically carry over to the others.

The timeline

  • Before 2024: hydraulic Atlas. The research robot, which Boston Dynamics calls HD Atlas, was known for parkour and dance routines. The company says that work produced insights into control, balance and whole-body motion that informed later designs.
  • April 2024: electric Atlas. Boston Dynamics announced the hydraulic robot’s retirement and introduced a fully electric Atlas the same week, with plans to test applications with Hyundai and a small group of customers.
  • 2025: first application. The team focused on part sequencing in car plants and, in the fall, tested Atlas at Hyundai’s Metaplant in Georgia, an outing the company calls Atlas’s first deployment (Boston Dynamics history).
  • January 5, 2026: product version. At CES, Boston Dynamics unveiled the production Atlas during a Hyundai presentation that also included a live stage demonstration of the prototype. It said production would begin immediately at its Boston headquarters and named Hyundai Mobis as actuator supplier.
  • September 21, 2026: RMAC. Boston Dynamics opened its Robotics Metaplant Application Center at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, near Savannah, as a permanent training and testing site (The Robot Report).
  • October 1, 2026: new hand. A four-finger hand with 13 degrees of freedom succeeded the earlier seven-degree-of-freedom design (Boston Dynamics).
  • October 15, 2026: current spec sheet. The revision now posted lists 56 degrees of freedom, a 50 kg instant lift and four hours of battery life.

Why the labels matter

Hardware changed at each stage. The CES stage is the clearest example: the robot giving the live demonstration was the prototype, while the product version was the one on sale. The hand changed again nine months later. A clip from 2024 says little about the robot Hyundai receives, and a figure from the current spec sheet should not be read back onto earlier footage.

Results need the same care. Speaking to The Robot Report in September, Zack Jackowski, Boston Dynamics’ chief product and technology officer, called the earlier Hyundai trials “time-boxed deployments focused on lessons needed to design our scaled-up presence.” Those were tests of a robot still being developed, not operating records of the product.

The product Atlas is the one whose record now matters. Boston Dynamics said its 2026 deployments were committed to Hyundai’s RMAC and Google DeepMind, with more customers from early 2027. When results from those sites appear, the labels to look for are hardware version, software release and date.