2026-02-11
Robert Playter is retiring. - A former NCAA Division I National Champion gymnast - Athletic career highly influenced his work in robotics - At the MIT Leg Lab, programmed a bipedal robot to do the world's first 3D robotic somersault - 26 years at Boston Dynamics, serving as CEO [video]
The Robot Report
Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter steps down after more than 30 years with the company and plans to retire; CFO Amanda McMaster will take over as interim CEO
Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics, has stepped down from the company. Playter took over as CEO in 2019 and led the company through its acquisition by Hyundai in 2020.
2026-01-06
Boston Dynamics will begin production of the new Atlas robots at its Boston headquarters immediately. All Atlas deployments are already fully committed for 2026, with fleets scheduled to ship to Hyundai and Google DeepMind in the coming months. The company plans to add [video]
Wired
Boston Dynamics partners with Google DeepMind to integrate Gemini Robotics models into Atlas robots, boosting their object-manipulation capabilities and more
Google DeepMind and Boston Dynamics are teaming up to integrate Gemini into a humanoid robot called Atlas.
2025-05-30
HOPEJr is an open-source, DIY humanoid robot built by Hugging Face and The Robot Studio. It features 3D-printed parts, dexterous hands, and costs under $3,000. Here's the first fully assembled HOPEJr. Blueprint: https://github.com/... [video]
TechCrunch
Hugging Face unveils two open-source humanoid robots, the $3,000 full-sized HopeJR and a $250-$300 Reachy Mini desktop unit, expected to ship by the end of 2025
AI dev platform Hugging Face continued its push into robotics on Thursday with the release of two new humanoid robots.
2025-04-20
Tiangong robot won the Beijing half marathon with a time of 2 hours 40 minutes - more than twice the time of the men's race winner. The robot is built by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. [video]
Wall Street Journal
A half-marathon in Beijing featured a road race with human runners and 21 Chinese humanoid robots, highlighting both the progress and limitations of such robots
A half-marathon in Beijing featured a road race between human runners and 21 robot models—and showed how far robots still are from mimicking people.
2025-04-19
Tiangong robot won the Beijing half marathon with a time of 2 hours 40 minutes - more than twice the time of the men's race winner. The robot is built by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. [video]
Wall Street Journal
A half-marathon in Beijing featured a road race with human runners and 21 Chinese humanoid robots, highlighting both the progress and limitations of such robots
A half-marathon in Beijing featured a road race between human runners and 21 robot models—and showed how far robots still are from mimicking people.
2025-02-15
Brace yourself for this! Reuters: “Figure AI is in talks with investors to raise $1.5 billion, valuing the company at $39.5 billion.” Wow! Just a year ago, Figure raised $675M at a $2.6B valuation. The new valuation would be 15x higher! [image]
Bloomberg
Sources: humanoid robot startup Figure is in talks to raise $1.5B led by Align Ventures and Parkway VC at a $39.5B valuation, up from $2.6B in February 2024
Bloomberg :
2024-10-17
Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute (TRI) have announced a joint research agreement to develop general-purpose humanoids. They will combine TRI's Large Behavior Models with Atlas to accelerate progress in dexterous manipulation and whole-body behaviors. [image]
Bloomberg
Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute partner to speed up development of humanoid robots using TRI's large behavior models and Boston Dynamics' Atlas
Chester Dawson / Bloomberg :