Boston Dynamics opens Georgia center to train Atlas for factory work

Boston Dynamics opens Georgia center to train Atlas for factory work

2 min read•Sep 21, 2026•
Elena Vasquez
Elena Vasquez

Boston Dynamics has opened a Georgia center to train Atlas humanoids for automotive work, first reported by Therobotreport. The permanent Robotics Metaplant Application Center (RMAC) will use real automotive parts, fixtures, workcells, and production data to test applications and build the capabilities needed to deploy Atlas across Hyundai’s global network over time.

RMAC trains Atlas on factory handling

RMAC sits at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America near Savannah, Ga. Boston Dynamics describes it as a permanent testbed and training center for integrating Atlas into Hyundai’s automotive manufacturing operations, unlike earlier time-boxed, small-scale trials focused on gathering deployment lessons.

Atlas is learning from teleoperation, reinforcement learning in simulation, and Universal Manipulation Interface devices. At RMAC, work includes preparing and sequencing automotive parts before assembly, handling complex surfaces, respecting cosmetic or fragile areas, and extracting parts from shipping packaging before inserting them into high-density cubbies for transport to the line.

Those tasks can require bimanual manipulation because parts may be large, awkwardly weighted, or fragile. The center combines real parts, fixtures, and workcells with Atlas robots and skilled pilots to produce diverse data for behavior training.

The early lessons point in two directions: production-version design assumptions have been close to right, while the applications have exposed questions about modifying fixtures and packaging, collecting data in production environments, and building support processes for humanoids.

Boston Dynamics plans to expand Atlas to component assembly by 2030. Over time, the company said, Atlas will take on repetitive and strenuous work such as lifting heavy loads, while data collection and other training tasks continue through 2027.

Hyundai said it will deploy Atlas across its global network, beginning with 25,000 units at Hyundai Motor and Kia global plants over the next few years. Hyundai is also planning a U.S. factory that can manufacture up to 30,000 robots annually by 2028.

RMAC’s first phase is already operational. Next year, operations will move into a new building that will expand the center by about 10 times and support further preparation of Atlas for automotive deployments, while Boston Dynamics plans to explore use cases in other industries.

Arizona appeals court vacates manslaughter sentence after AI video

An Arizona appeals court vacated the 10.5-year sentence of Gabriel Horcasitas while upholding his manslaughter conviction, first reported by Nytimes. The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for resentencing without the video, after judges found that it presented scripted statements as if the victim himself were speaking in court.

The three-judge panel said the video generated a likeness of Christopher Pelkey’s voice and appearance but did not reflect actual events. It found that allowing and relying on the video made the sentencing fundamentally unfair, and noted that no prior Arizona case had addressed the admissibility of such a depiction at sentencing.

The judges said a victim’s right to speak cannot override a defendant’s right to be sentenced on accurate, reliable information. They said the video collapsed the distinction between the family’s belief about what Pelkey would have said and Pelkey’s own voice and opinions.

The ruling distinguishes family members speaking about Pelkey from a generated likeness that appeared to speak for him.

Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, presented the video during Horcasitas’s sentencing alongside victim-impact statements from family and friends. Wales wrote the script and said her husband and the couple’s longtime business partner helped create the video using Pelkey’s voice from a YouTube video and his face and torso from a funeral-service poster.

Judge Todd F. Lang praised the video as genuine, then imposed the maximum sentence of 10.5 years, more than the nine years prosecutors had sought.

Wales said nobody intended to make the court believe Pelkey was alive or that he had recorded the video before his death. She said she disagreed with the ruling and argued that families use slide shows, collages, hypothetical conversations and poetry to convey grief.

Wales compared the AI video with photography, saying it took 15 years of landmark cases around the 1860s before photography was widely accepted in courts.

The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for a new sentencing hearing without the AI-generated video.