Later this year, Dynamics of Boston plans to put your all -electric humanoid atlas robot to work in a Hyundai factory. The new version of the bot, has evolved from hydraulics Atlas The model that has made viral video demos since 2013 made its public debut last spring. But while the layout of dog points and warehouse robot is already deployed on industrial sites, the Hyundai driver will be the first time that Atlas has been used in commercial manufacturing.
Boston Dynamics, which was acquired by Hyundai For $ 1.1 billion in 2021, it is shy on how the robot will be used, but the general idea is that it is designed to be stronger and more reliable than a human worker. “The robot will be able to do difficult things for humans,” said Boston Dynamics spokesperson Kerri Neelon. “Like picking up very heavy objects and carrying things that are annoying for humans.”
Atlas will have friends: 2025 seems to be the year when versatile humanoid robots, so far, are largely limited to research laboratories, GO commercial. Some have already taken their first stages of provisional robot in paid work, with Agility Robotics' Digit Move articles in a warehouse and the eponymous biped of the figure Shipping to commercial customers Last year.
Technology giants are also on the trend: both Apple And Meta According to rumors, they work on a sort of consumer -oriented humanoid robot. A Goldman Sachs 2024 report Considers that humanoid robots will represent a market of $ 38 billion by 2035 – more than six times what the company has planned a year earlier.
The basic promise of humanoid robots is that they will be able to switch between several tasks, just like their human peers. It is a fundamentally different approach to the automation of traditional mounting chains, which builds an entire environment around the specific tasks necessary for manufacturing. Jonathan Hurst, co -founder and robot chief at Agility Robotics, expects his robots to be seated next to this process, not disturb him.
“A specially designed automation solution will always be higher performance and a lower cost for this purpose,” explains Hurst. “It's great if you have 24/7 operations for this specific thing you want to do.” But for tasks that do not need to run 24 hours a day, a flexible robot could be more productive.
Boston Dynamics says a different way. With factories already designed to be a safe place for automation, the company says it has built Atlas to make a robot that could go everywhere else. “We live in a world first,” says Neelon, “so we have to build a robot that reflects this.”
But there are challenges to put humanoid robots on the market. Optimus de Tesla was strongly planned since the company announced it in 2021, but a demo in October aroused concerns when the robot exposed proved to be controlled by humans, raising questions about the measure in which Optimus could operate independently. In JanuaryMusk said that the company was to build “several thousand” robots in 2025 – but in April he Tell to investors Production could be affected by restrictions on rare land exports China is implemented In response to the part of President Donald Trump price.
