Tough week for Tesla. Nvidia is about to ship a competitive self-driving solution and Hyundai is putting a useful humanoid robot into production.

What claim will Elon make next to defend the stock price?

Whoever approved making a robot look like it is about to dance before awkwardly panning to a "static" model should not be making those decisions. It literally killed the vibe in the room. People went from the verge of freaking out to the biggest let down ever that it ruined whatever they said afterwards.

This is real world footage ("60 Minutes" material, video from yesterday), non choreographed Boston Dynamics robots from Hyundai factory:

https://youtu.be/CbHeh7qwils?t=437

"It can totally control itself, but we're gonna have a human control it"

also

"the next version is totally ready, but here's a full-size model"

It's interesting so far we have not seen the new Atlas actually functioning. In the past Boston Dynamics announcements have always been done with real hardware. But this time it's only with models and CGI.

What happened?

Why does it needs bipedal legs on a flat factory floor, does it need them to walk up the bus steps it takes to get to it's second story walk up apartment where it lives w/ its robot family?

What will it cost though? They keep talking industrial, I guess it will be very expensive. You would hope that a company like Hyundai can mass produce these things for a sane price really.

Very cool.

On one hand, this is great. It portends that all of us will benefit from intense price-and-feature competition between Hyundai, Tesla, and others.

On the other hand, Ironman 2's Hammer Drones no longer seem so far off:

https://youtu.be/Ryth87k2Mww?t=78

and Robocop doesn't seem so far-off either:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECemP5fi_n0

We sure live in interesting times.

Battery factory's in china are using wheeled robots. https://cnevpost.com/2025/12/18/catl-launches-humanoid-robot...

that's a very impressive demo, I have never seen a robot move so smoothly before.

I wonder how easy it is to control. Like does someone have to spend 6 months in a lab programming each movement, or could you have it doing a new task by the end of the day?

It would be cool to have one at home as a little helper some day.

Wonder how much this would cost out the door. If figure’s optimistic target is 150k per robot after mass manufacturing. This level of dexterity is only needed for personal robots. I would love this to be sub 10k

The robot companies are all get closer, but I don't think a humanoid robot will do anything at a cheaper cost than an actual human in 2026. It definitely looks like there is a path though.

Will the winner in the humanoid robot game be the one that develops the most human like hands? A good test would be a robot that can thread a needle and sew on a button.

Related:

Boston Dynamics and DeepMind form new AI partnership

https://smackernews.com/item/46504966 HN

This robot is going to put all the children out of work at the Hyundai factory in Georgia. Or maybe their child labor augments the robot for tight to reach areas?

Interesting the Atlas robot can only operate from -4 to 104⁰ F. That upper limit is pretty weak, I wonder what starts to break or not work properly at 110⁰ F?

It looks cool, I'm wondering about the hands though. Human hands have a ton of dexterity and Atlas looks like it might be pretty fat fingered.

The new leg design is interesting - it's quite a change to have one segment out of line with the others; and unlike any natural leg ??

The video running behind the speaker at the absolute start looked familiar.

So I looked it up and it seems Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics now.

Can't help but thinking of hotdog fingers scene in "Everything Everywhere All At Once"

The way it stands up is so cursed but I find its face really charming.

I still believe it was a very bad idea that google sold of BD

I wonder if this will cause new legislation to be created, and new government bodies like the FDA. If this becomes available to many homes, what is to stop a hacker from programming this humanoid to kill its owners?

Fun to watch the joints reverse in unnatural ways.

Neat!

...We are going to have to fight against it at some point, will we ?