Mario Bollini, who leads Atlas product management at Boston Dynamics, discusses the robot’s development and commercial prospects with the Humanoid Hub.
Bollini traces his interest in building things from Science Olympiad and Rube Goldberg machines to mechanical engineering at MIT, where he added computer science and electrical engineering. In graduate school, he worked on autonomous cooking with the PR2, then helped start companies making outdoor wheelchairs and plantable pencils. He joined Boston Dynamics as the company began commercializing Spot.
Bollini says Spot’s early adopter program helped the team find a niche in dynamic sensing, facility maintenance, and monitoring. A customer’s excitement about buying a first robot is not proof that it delivers value. Successful adoption requires support from multiple stakeholders, including operators and maintenance teams, and fitting the robot into a company’s broader digital transformation.
Bollini says battery energy density made electric Atlas feasible, and Boston Dynamics developed its own motors and actuators to meet performance needs. Hydraulic Atlas was powerful but ran at thousands of psi, could leave fluid on floors, and was difficult to maintain. Electric actuation was a necessary step toward a robot that could be sold to customers.
The earlier Atlas relied on classical control approaches such as model predictive control. The newer program has adopted reinforcement learning for locomotion and behavior cloning for manipulation, with partners including RAI, NVIDIA, and TRI. Bollini says learned whole-body policies have shortened development time, while actuator choices are guided by cost, customer return on investment, and requirements derived from target tasks.
Atlas’s rotating leg and broad joint range were deliberate engineering choices that can let the robot turn in place and potentially reduce cycle times. Bollini says the team is evaluating tasks such as loading parts, removing tires from trailers, and moving debris at Fukushima. He sees the humanoid form as a flexible way to test commercial opportunities, while allowing that some tasks may eventually suit other robot designs better.
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A Boston Dynamics Prototype Operations team member explains how the company builds and improves Atlas, from precision machining through assembly and testing, alongside its engineers.
Boston Dynamics engineers discuss the design, simulation, and dexterity of Atlas’s new hands.
Boston Dynamics’ robotics team discusses Atlas’s path to industrial work at Hyundai Motor Group’s Robotics Metaplant Application Center, with a host visiting the facility.
The Atlas Director of Robot Behavior at Boston Dynamics talks with NEXT host John Koetsier about Atlas’s design, robot intelligence, factory integration, and why legs can suit industrial work.
Chris Thorn, Atlas hardware team lead at Boston Dynamics, discusses the new Atlas design with industrial designers Aaron Abroff and James Kucera at Boston Dynamics.
Zack Jackowski, Atlas development lead at Boston Dynamics, and company researchers discuss training humanoid robots for factory work; Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind explores AI’s capabilities and risks; Palmer Luckey of Anduril describes autonomous weapons; and artists and engineers in Carrara debate robots in sculpture.
