On 6th January, 2026, Hyundai Motor Group-owned Boston Dynamics challenged Tesla’s Optimus with Atlas, its humanoid super-robot.

First, you should watch this.

The first comment I read on this video was:

  • Yes, it does walk with a swag. No denying that. And it awes you with its moves. Full-rotation moves and 56 degrees of freedom (sixteen more than Optimus has).
  • It weighs 90 kilos (Optimus weighs 57 kilos) and stands 6 ft 2 inches tall (the same as M&B heroes, while Optimus is 5 ft 8 inches tall).
  • It’s got tactile, industrial hands. Optimus, on the other hand, has human-like hands and movements.
  • Atlas can go on forever by swapping its batteries, Optimus has a downtime (and must nap, like humans.)
  • Atlas is trained on LBMs (Large Behavioral Models), which makes it capable of quickly adapting to new industrial tasks. Optimus is trained on the Tesla software that makes it adapt to general tasks.
  • Atlas can lift 50 kgs of weight while Optimus can lift only up to 20 kgs.

Why Atlas’s 2026 launch is Important?

It’s important because Atlas’s abilities make it a worthy or even stronger competitor to Tesla’s Optimus. It’s got a 2026 order-book of 30K bots that it’s making for Hyundai (Hyundai has a controlling stake of 80% in Boston Dynamics). Boston Dynamics is also shaking hands with Google to get DeepMind to power Atlas. This means that we can now expect companies to enter a robot-building race.

AI (LLMs) have a hand in training Atlas. AI, on the other hand, lacks a body to experience the physical world. Robots modeled on not just humans, but other animals, even birds, fish, and insects, can bring back a tremendous amount of data (that is inaccessible to humans, and hence still unexplored), and help AI grow. After witnessing how Atlas has moved beyond human movements, this synergistic growth appears to be just around the corner.

Note: The final look of Atlas can be seen in the following video.

So, what do you think about Robots shaking hands with AI?

URLs to Check:
https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/newsroom/detail/hyundai-motor-group-announces-ai-robotics-strategy-to-lead-human-centered-robotics-era-at-ces-2026-0000001100

And the endnote, courtesy of another commentator.