Fauna, a new startup, is betting that humanoid robots will find success as hospitality workers, research assistants, and entertainers. The newest humanoid robot on the scene, Sprout, is not designed to carry boxes or stack shelves. Instead, this charming and relatively cheap model, roughly the size of a 9-year-old child, is meant to help customers in hotels, shops, and restaurants. "We said, 'What if we could build something lightweight, engaging, and safe to be around, and capable enough to do some exciting things?'" says Robert Cochran, cofounder and CEO of Fauna, the startup behind Sprout. Sprout is available to purchase starting today from $50,000. Cochran adds that his firm is already talking to hotels about using Sprout as a butler that brings toothbrushes and other items to guests in need.

What could possibly go wrong? The 4-foot-tall humanoid robot that's in front of me seems, quite honestly, a bit drunk. After 30 seconds or so it abruptly stops, then strides toward me with an arm outstretched. The little robot is at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, on the banks of the Huangpu river in Shanghai. The convention center is teeming with humanoids --dancing ones, box-toting ones, robot dog-walking ones doing circuits around trade show booths. A few lie slumped in a corner as their batteries recharge. A Unitree humanoid robot modified for experimental purposes at the BAAI.

The new Atlas will be deployed at Hyundai and Google DeepMind first. Boston Dynamics' Atlas is finally entering production. After years of testing this humanoid robot (and forcing it to dance), the robotics company announced at CES 2026 that the final version of the machine is being built now. The first companies to receive deployments will be Hyundai, Boston Dynamics' majority shareholder, and Google DeepMind, the firm's new AI partner . This final enterprise version of Atlas can perform a wide array of industrial tasks, according to Boston Dynamics, and is specifically designed with consistency and reliability in mind.

Hyundai Motor Group says it will roll out human-like robots in its factories from 2028, as major companies race to use the new technology. The South Korean firm showed off Atlas, a humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamics, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday. Hyundai says it plans to integrate Atlas across its global network, including a plant in the US state of Georgia that was involved in a massive immigration raid in 2025 . Other firms that have said they will use humanoid robots in their operations include Amazon, Tesla and Chinese car making giant BYD. The Atlas robots will gradually take on more tasks, said Hyundai.

The new Atlas will be deployed at Hyundai and Google DeepMind first. After years of testing its humanoid robot (and forcing it to dance), Boston Dynamics' Atlas is entering production . The robotics company says the final product version of the robot is being built now, and the first companies that will receive deployments are Hyundai, Boston Dynamics' majority shareholder, and Google DeepMind, the firm's newly minted AI partner. This final enterprise version of Atlas can perform a wide array of industrial tasks, according to Boston Dynamics, and is specifically designed with consistency and reliability in mind. Atlas can work autonomously, via a teleoperator or with a tablet steering interface, and the robot is both strong and durable.

Google DeepMind and Boston Dynamics are teaming up to integrate Gemini into a humanoid robot called Atlas. Google DeepMind is teaming up with Boston Dynamics to give its humanoid robots the intelligence required to navigate unfamiliar environments and identify and manipulate objects--precisely the kinds of capabilities needed to perform manual labor. The collaboration, announced at CES in Las Vegas, will see Google's Gemini Robotics model deployed on various Boston Dynamics' robots, including a humanoid called Atlas and a robot dog called Spot . The companies plan to test Gemini-powered Atlas robots at auto factories belonging to Hyundai, Boston Dynamics' parent company, in the coming months. The move is an early look at a future where humanoids are able to quickly master a wide range of tasks.

DeepMind's chief says he envisions Gemini as an operating system for physical robots. The company has hired Aaron Saunders to help make that a reality. Google DeepMind has hired the former Chief Technology Officer of Boston Dynamics as the company pushes deeper into robotics. Aaron Saunders, who is partly responsible for giving the world backflipping and dancing machines, joined as the VP of hardware engineering earlier this month. The hire is a key part of CEO Demis Hassabis' vision for Gemini to become a sort of robot operating system, similar to how Google supplies its Android software to an array of smartphone manufacturers.

Though they have improved, robots hands are still far worse than a human's. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. If you want to guess the purpose of any given futuristic humanoid robot, look at its hands. Last week, a pair of videos released by Boston Dynamics and Figure AI provided clear examples that certain tasks simply require much more "human touch." In the first case, Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics showed off a new pair of "grippers" for its trimmed-down Atlas factory robot.

Atlas, the humanoid robot famous for its parkour and dance routines, has recently begun demonstrating something altogether more subtle but also a lot more significant: It has learned to both walk and grab things using a single artificial intelligence model. What is more, the robot's single learning model is showing some tantalizingly "emergent" skills, like the ability to instinctively recover when it drops an item without having been trained to do so. Boston Dynamics, the company that makes Atlas, together with the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), developed a generalist model that learns to control both arms and legs from a range of example actions. This is different from the norm: robots equipped with the ability to learn would usually rely on one model to walk and jump and another to grasp items. "The feet are just like additional hands, in some sense, to the model," says Russ Tedrake, a roboticist at the Toyota Research Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the current work.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Many dog owners warmly remember the first time their furry pal finally nailed a new trick they spent weeks working on. Countless bacon-flavored treats and high-pitched words of encouragement are all offered up in service of achieving a passable "roll over" or "shake." It turns out Boston Dynamics engineers go through a similarly painstaking reward process with their quadruped robot, "Spot." A video of the feat (above), shared by the company late last week, shows an orange-coated Spot load up on its two front legs, heave itself backward into the air, flip, and land back on all fours.