- Boston Dynamics Atlas can deliver a drink
- It also delivers the refrigerator because it can lift up to 110 lbs.
- We also get a glimpse into how they’re training the Atlas Product humanoid robots
Atlas delivers a drink in much the same way The Hulk might do it: forget the can, bring the refrigerator. In a new video demo, we’re finally getting a good look at what the all-new Atlas Product humanoid robot can do, and it’s eye-opening, to be sure.
When I last saw the Atlas Product at CES 2026, it stood stiffly while the all-electric Atlas Prototype moved boxes and folded itself up almost accordion-style. The updated Product, though, has even more impressive moves, especially since no part of its body appears limited by typical human-level flexibility.
Where you might be able to rotate your torso, at most, 90 degrees, Atlas can spin its upper body a full 360-degrees, a skill that turns out to be quite useful for delivering a frosty cold drink. The new robot, according to a Boston Dynamics release delivered in January, has 56 degrees of freedom, can replace its own battery, and lift up to 110 pounds.
Boston Dynamics actually delivered two videos on Monday (May 18), and while the one of the Atlas Product robot hefting a refrigerator and delivering it to a lab tech so they can retrieve a cold drink is fun to watch, it’s the second, deep dive video on how Boston Dynamics trains Atlas, and why they chose to demonstrate its skills in this slightly comical way, that’s worth watching.
Atlas practices…a lot
Unlike many other humanoid robots, Atlas’s first job won’t be in the home, and much of the development work has been in service of delivering a system that is low-cost, simple, reliable, and can easily slip into a manufacturing role. Perhaps that’s why, while Altas resembles the human form, it’s far less so than, say, Neo Bot, Telsa Optimus, or Figure 03 from Figure AI. You could argue, though, that its design makes Atlas faster, more agile, and perhaps far more ready to deliver a heavy package from Spot A to Spot B.
In the video, Atlas lifts an unplugged, 50LB mini fridge and carries it over to a table, where it gingerly places it down before stepping aside and watching the researcher retrieve a canned beverage. 50Lbs is significant, but the researchers noted that in lab tests, they had Atlas effortlessly lifting 100lbs. In both instances, the goal was somewhat human-like effort. “A tool basically that is similar to humans, which means it needs to start interacting with objects. And objects come in all shapes and forms,” says Boston Dynamics Atlas Research Engineer Vinay Kamidi.
Atlas doesn’t just lift the fridge. “Put your whole body into it, was kind of the idea,” notes Boston Dynamics Atlas Controls Associate Director Benjamin Stephens.
Getting Atlas to perform this skill without mishaps is the product of lengthy, visualized training. The researchers start with an animation of the task and then, within the computer, run “millions of hours” of simulations where the robot practices lifting, carrying, and placing the refrigerator.
By the time they ran the program on the real Atlas hardware, it performed the task perfectly.
It’s funny to think that a robot that can perform a back flip, relatively few humans can do, takes millions of simulated attempts to learn a task that a human could master in moments. AI is speeding up the simulation process, however, and Boston Dynamics researchers are not only excited about its current beverage-delivery capabilities but also about what the future holds.
“We have not seen the limits of what Atlas can do,” says Atlas Software Engineer Shane Rozen-Levy, in the video, and the future is “only limited by our imagination.”
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
