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.

"They have almost 100 per cent turn-over in logistics jobs like picking and packing boxes," Robert Playter told Yahoo Finance Canada at the Collision tech conference in Toronto. "We've definitely seen [with] our industrial or warehouse customers [that] interest in robotics has only increased during the pandemic." Boston Dynamics has shown its "Stretch" robot is smart enough to react to a stack of boxes suddenly falling over, and clean up the mess. The company plans to release a new robot every three-to-five years aimed at mastering a new workplace task. But Playter says the key is Boston Dynamics looks for the sweet spot between what the labour market needs, and what its robots are capable of doing.

Right now, the focus is on Spot, the versatile quadruped first made commercially available in June 2020. 'The next big industry for Spot is really in this market that we're calling industrial sensing or dynamics sensing,' Zack Jackowski, chief engineer of the Spot product, told told CNBC over the weekend. '[That's] where we have robots walking around places like manufacturing plants, chemical plants, utilities [and] installations, and using the robots to collect data on what's happening in these facilities in an automated way,' he said. Being able to get repeatable, high quality data from Spot, Jackowski added, could enable companies to boost safety and efficiency in ways they never considered before. While Boston Dynamics likes to play up Spot's softer side -- releasing videos of it playing fetch and dancing to bops by K-pop sensation BTS and other acts -- it's already employed by Hyundai to patrol assembly lines at a Kia factory in Gwangmyeong, Korea. Hyundai has equipped the robot with a thermal camera and three-dimensional LiDAR sensing technology that allows it to see humans, determine whether doors are open or closed, monitor high-temperature systems, and detect fire hazards.

"If Willy Wonka made robots, his workshop might look something like this," Anderson Cooper said while touring Boston Dynamics' Waltham workshop. Cooper was visiting for a "60 Minutes" segment which gave a behind-the-scenes look at the company and their life-like robots. The segment titled "Boston Dynamics: Inside the workshop where robots of the future are being built" initially aired in March – a few weeks after Anderson's visit – and was rebroadcast last night. Boston Dynamics is also featured on another online segment uploaded today, regarding their efforts to help create autonomous Mars rovers. Boston Dynamics gave 60 Minutes a rare look into how it created some of the most agile robots in the world. Cooper talked to Boston Dynamics' founder, Mark Raibert, and CEO, Robert Playter, as well as other technicians and employees.

Boston Dynamics announced that it has developed a robot arm for its "Spot" robot and also a charging station. Both will be available for purchase this spring. The robot Spot made quite a splash on the internet last year, thanks to its YouTube videos. The four-legged yellow-bodied robot was shown marching its way autonomously and untethered through a wide variety of terrain in ways reminiscent of a dog; hence its name. The robot dog is available for sale.

Boston Dynamics is just months away from announcing their approach to logistics, the first real vertical it aims to enter, after proving their ability to build robots at scale with the quadrupedal Spot. The company's new CEO, Robert Playter, sees the company coming into its own after decades of experimentation. Playter, interviewed on the virtual main stage of Disrupt 2020, only recently ascended from COO to that role after many years of working there, after longtime CEO and founder Marc Raibert stepped aside to focus on R&D. This is his Playter's first public speaking engagement since taking on the new responsibility, and it's clear he has big plans for Boston Robotics. The recent commercialization of Spot, the versatile quadrupedal robot that is a distant descendant of the famous Big Dog, showed Playter and the company that there is a huge demand for what they're offering, even if they're not completely sure where that demand is.

Founded in 1992, Boston Dynamics is arguably the best-known robot company around, in part because its demonstration videos tend to go viral. Now it is attempting to transform from an R&D company to a robotics business, with an eye on profitability for the first time. When we interviewed Boston Dynamics founder and former CEO Marc Raibert in November 2019, we discussed the company's customers, potential applications, AI, simulation, and those viral videos. But it turns out Raibert was transitioning out of the CEO role at the time -- current CEO Robert Playter told us in an interview this month that he took the helm in November. We sat down to discuss Playter's first year as CEO; profitability; Spot, Pick, Handle, and Atlas; and the company's broader roadmap, including which robots are next. Boston Dynamics hired Playter in 1994. After 18 years as vice president of engineering, Playter took a director role when the company was acquired by Google.

Boston Dynamics today opened commercial sales of Spot, its quadruped robot that can climb stairs and traverse rough terrain, in Canada, the EU, and the U.K. Additionally, CEO Robert Playter told VentureBeat in an interview that Spot is getting more payloads next year, including a recharging station and a robot arm. Boston Dynamics started selling the Spot Explorer developer kit to U.S. businesses for $74,500 in June. Spot Explorer includes the robot, two batteries, the battery charger, the tablet controller, a robot case, a power case, and Python client packages for Spot APIs. You can only buy up to two Spots via Boston Dynamics' shopping portal. If you want more units, the company has two other pricing tiers: Academic (discount for accredited educational institutions) and Enterprise (more sensors, software integration, communications infrastructure, and robot fleet management).