Boston Dynamics opens a Georgia centre to train Atlas humanoids on car work

Boston Dynamics opens a Georgia centre to train Atlas humanoids on car work

21 September 2026: Boston Dynamics has opened the Robotics Metaplant Application Center, or RMAC, inside Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia, outside Savannah. It is a testbed and training centre for the company's Atlas humanoid robots doing car-manufacturing tasks, and the first phase is operational.

Not yet independently verified. The 25,000-unit and 30,000-robots-a-year figures are Hyundai Motor Group plans with no stated timeline. They are not deliveries. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

What Atlas does there now

Atlas is being trained in real-world settings, starting with logistics and the sequencing of parts before they are arranged for assembly. Component assembly is planned by 2030, and over time the robot is expected to take on repetitive motions and strenuous work such as lifting heavy loads. The centre follows the Atlas unveiling at Hyundai Motor Group's Media Day at CES 2026.

The training centre sits inside a working plant, so the robots learn on the actual flow of parts in the building where they will work.

A building ten times the size

In 2027 the centre moves to a new building at the Metaplant that is roughly ten times the size of the current space. In the same year Boston Dynamics will start exploring Atlas use cases in other sectors. It is in talks with existing Spot and Stretch customers in manufacturing, aerospace, semiconductors, logistics, food and beverage, and life sciences about scaling the data collection used to train Atlas.

Spot is the company's quadruped for industrial inspection and facility performance data, and Stretch moves boxes for logistics and retail customers. Atlas, the electric humanoid, is described in the boilerplate as still in development.

The numbers Hyundai has put forward

Hyundai Motor Group plans to deploy 25,000 Atlas units across Hyundai Motor and Kia plants around the world over the next few years, and to build a new US production facility able to make 30,000 robots a year. These are group plans, and the announcement gives no timeline for the 25,000.

Atlas as the company specifies it

The Atlas product page gives these specifications:

• height 1.9 m and weight 90 kg
• reach of 2.3 m and 56 degrees of freedom, with continuous range of motion
• payload of 50 kg instantaneous and 30 kg sustained
• battery life of 4 hours
• IP67 rating and an operating temperature of minus 20 to 40 degrees Celsius
• tactile sensing and a 360-degree camera view

Atlas navigates to a charging station and swaps out its own battery, is built to use the same workstations and equipment as human staff, and shares learning: a skill learned by one Atlas can be deployed across the whole fleet. It connects through Orbit, the company's software, to manufacturing execution and warehouse management systems and other systems of record, where customers can oversee its work and review fleet metrics.

The page says Atlas is not yet widely available. Boston Dynamics is starting with a select number of early adopters, and a customer pilot with Hyundai for field testing on real sequencing tasks is underway. Planned future skills include part sequencing, machine tending and order building, and onboarding runs in four steps: Prepare, Evaluate, Train and Adopt.

Zack Jackowski, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Boston Dynamics, says: "Together with Hyundai Motor Group, we are pioneering physical AI at enterprise scale."

Sources

• Boston Dynamics: opens Robotics Metaplant Application Center to train humanoid robots for manufacturing tasks, 21 September 2026
• Boston Dynamics: Atlas product page (read 2026-10-17), 17 October 2026