# Boston Dynamics Atlas robots start training at a new center inside Hyundai’s Georgia plant

URL: https://onticpost.com/boston-dynamics-atlas-metaplant-application-center/
Published: 2026-10-05
Updated: 2026-10-05
By: Hill, Onticpost

> Boston Dynamics Atlas robots are training at a new center in Hyundai's Georgia plant. The release names 25,000 units and leaves out the 2028 start date.

Boston Dynamics opened a training center for its humanoid robot inside Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, the carmaker’s plant outside Savannah, Georgia, on September 21, 2026, according to the company’s press release of that date. The site is called the Robotics Metaplant Application Center, or RMAC, and Boston Dynamics Atlas robots are now in training there. The release repeats Hyundai Motor Group’s plan to put 25,000 Atlas units into Hyundai Motor and Kia plants “over the next few years”. It does not say how many robots are in the center today. Onticpost has no robot hardware, so nothing below is a test result of ours. Every figure is the maker’s or the plant’s own, taken from documents we saved.

**Takeaway points**

- Boston Dynamics said on September 21, 2026, that the first phase of its Robotics Metaplant Application Center is operational at Hyundai’s Georgia plant, and that Hyundai Motor Group plans to deploy 25,000 Atlas units at Hyundai Motor and Kia plants over the next few years.
- The same release describes Atlas as a platform “currently in development”, and it gives no date for the 25,000 units and no count of the robots now in the center.
- We have not tested Atlas or its software, and Boston Dynamics has not published the size, the cost or the staffing of the center.

## What is the Boston Dynamics Atlas application center at Hyundai’s Georgia plant?

It is a training and testing site for Atlas that sits on the campus of a working car plant. The press release, datelined Boston and Savannah, says RMAC “serves as a testbed and training center for integrating Atlas robots directly into Hyundai Motor Group’s (the Group) automobile manufacturing operations.”

Hyundai Motor Group named the center more than eight months earlier. Its release of January 5, 2026, issued for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, called RMAC the “engine” of the group’s robotics business and said the facility was “set to open in 2026, in the U.S.” The opening on September 21 keeps that date.

The two companies do not spell the name the same way. Boston Dynamics writes Robotics Metaplant Application Center, in the September release and in its own post of January 5. Hyundai’s January release writes Robot Metaplant Application Center. Both shorten it to RMAC.

The speaker in the September release is Zack Jackowski, whose title is given as Chief Product & Technology Officer at Boston Dynamics. In the January documents he was the general manager of Atlas. His statement in the release reads: “Together with Hyundai Motor Group, we are pioneering physical AI at enterprise scale”.

The Robot Report, a trade outlet, published an interview with Jackowski on the day of the opening. We have no primary document for what follows in this paragraph, so it rests on that outlet alone. Jackowski told The Robot Report that earlier humanoid trials were “time-boxed deployments”, and he described RMAC as “a permanent facility that’s focused on both data collection and application testing”. The outlet also reported that Atlas learns from teleoperation, from reinforcement learning in simulation and from Universal Manipulation Interface devices.

## What tasks is Atlas being trained to do at the Metaplant?

Atlas is being trained to put car parts into the order in which the assembly line needs them, a job the release calls sequencing. The release says the robots are being trained in real-world environments, “such as preparing the logistics and sequencing of automotive parts before placing them in the correct order for assembly.”

Two further stages are named. “By 2030, applications will extend to component assembly”, the release says. After that, with no date, Atlas “will take on new tasks involving repetitive motions and strenuous work like lifting heavy loads.”

Training is not the same as production work, and the release does not claim otherwise. It does not say that any Atlas robot is working on the Metaplant’s assembly line. The caption on the photograph that Boston Dynamics published with the release reads “Multiple Atlas robots complete tasks in the RMAC training center”, which places the robots in the center, not on the line.

Boston Dynamics also plans to look beyond car plants. The release says the company “plans to begin exploring use cases in other industry sectors next year” and is in discussions with several existing customers of its Spot and Stretch robots, in manufacturing, aerospace, semiconductors, logistics, food and beverage, and life sciences. The stated aim of those talks is to scale data collection and continue the training of Atlas in 2027. No customer is named. Other makers are at a different stage of the same road, and we have reported on [Agility Robotics’ merger filing and the Digit revenue and deployment figures in it](https://onticpost.com/agility-robotics-digit-revenue-spac-filing/). Software for robots that work in factories is changing hands and opening up at the same time: [Intrinsic, a Google unit, has released parts of its robot software platform as open source](https://onticpost.com/intrinsic-core-open-source-robot-software/).

## When will Atlas robots work on Hyundai production lines?

Hyundai’s January release says 2028, and the September release from Boston Dynamics leaves that year out. In January Hyundai Motor Group wrote: “Beginning in 2028, Atlas will be introduced on processes with proven safety and quality benefits, such as parts sequencing.” The same document said RMAC-trained robots would move to “complex assembly work by 2030.”

The September release keeps 2030 for component assembly and gives no year for the first production work. It also gives no year for the robot factory. Hyundai’s January release said the group aims, by 2028, for a production system “capable of manufacturing 30,000 robot units annually”. The September release says only that the group “will establish a new production facility in the U.S. capable of producing 30,000 robots annually.”

We cannot tell from the documents whether 2028 still stands. Neither company has said it has changed.

| Milestone | Hyundai Motor Group, January 5, 2026 | Boston Dynamics, September 21, 2026 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| RMAC opens | “set to open in 2026, in the U.S.” | First phase “now operational” |
| Atlas on sequencing work in production | Beginning in 2028 | No year given |
| Component assembly | By 2030 | By 2030 |
| Atlas units for group plants | “tens of thousands” | 25,000, “over the next few years” |
| United States robot factory, 30,000 a year | By 2028 | No year given |
| RMAC moves to a larger building | Not mentioned | 2027, about ten times the current size |

The 25,000 figure is new in September. In January Hyundai wrote of demand for “tens of thousands of Atlas units”, and Boston Dynamics wrote that Hyundai Motor Group, which it called its majority shareholder, was “preparing to deploy tens of thousands” of its robots. The September release narrows that to 25,000 units at Hyundai Motor and Kia’s global plants, with the words “beginning with” in front of the number and no end date after it.

There is one more timing note from January. Boston Dynamics said then that all Atlas deployments for 2026 were “already fully committed”, with fleets due to ship to RMAC and to Google DeepMind “in the coming months”, and that it planned to add customers in early 2027. The September release does not say how many robots were shipped to Georgia.

## How big is Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America?

The plant stands on a 2,900-acre site in Bryan County, Georgia, and is designed to build more than 500,000 vehicles a year, according to the Metaplant’s own website. The site says the plant is about 30 miles west of downtown Savannah and that production began in October 2024.

| Figure | What the Metaplant’s website says |
| --- | --- |
| Site | 2,900-acre megasite in Bryan County |
| Distance from Savannah | About 30 miles west of downtown |
| Start of production | October 2024 |
| Designed output | More than 500,000 vehicles a year |
| Workers on the site once fully operational | More than 8,500 |
| Models built | Hyundai IONIQ 5, Hyundai IONIQ 9 and, since June 2026, the Kia Sportage Hybrid |

The size of RMAC itself is not published. Boston Dynamics says only that next year “operations will move into a new building in HMGMA that will expand the RMAC to approximately ten times its current size.” Ten times an unstated figure is still an unstated figure.

The plant already uses other machines. Its website says robots and automated guided vehicles work alongside employees, with robots handling “much of the heavy lifting”. The website’s news page, as we saved it on October 5, 2026, carried no item about RMAC. Its latest entry was dated August 24, 2026.

## What does Boston Dynamics say Atlas can lift, and do the two companies agree?

Boston Dynamics says Atlas can lift up to 50 kg, or 110 lbs, and the two companies’ January documents agree on that figure but not on the temperature range. These are the makers’ claims. We have measured none of them.

| Claim | Boston Dynamics, January 5, 2026 | Hyundai Motor Group, January 5, 2026 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Degrees of freedom | 56 | 56 |
| Lifting strength | Up to 50 kg (110 lbs) | Up to 110 lbs (50 kg) |
| Reach | 2.3 m (7.5 ft) | Not given |
| Operating temperature in Fahrenheit | -4 to 104 | -4 to 104 |
| Operating temperature in Celsius | -20 to 40 | 20 to 40 |

Hyundai’s release prints the Celsius range as 20 to 40, with no minus sign, beside “-4 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit”. Minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit is minus 20 degrees Celsius, so the Boston Dynamics figure is the one that matches, and our reading is that the Hyundai page dropped a minus sign. The page had not been corrected when we saved it.

Boston Dynamics also said in January that Atlas can be run in three ways: autonomously, by teleoperation, or from a tablet. It said the robot swaps its own batteries. The September release adds no new figure for the robot itself.

One line in the September release sits oddly beside the 25,000 number. The company description at the foot of the release calls Atlas “our electric humanoid platform currently in development.” In January Boston Dynamics said it would begin production of the new Atlas at its Boston headquarters immediately.

## What has Boston Dynamics not said about the Atlas center?

Boston Dynamics has not published the number of robots in the center, its floor area, its cost or the number of people who work there. The release also gives no measure of how well Atlas performs the sequencing task: no cycle time, no error rate and no hours run. Until one of those is published, the opening is a statement that training has begun, not evidence of what the robot can do on a line.

Three dates are open. The year when Atlas first does production work at the Metaplant appears in Hyundai’s January release and not in the September one. The 25,000 units have no deadline. The larger building is promised for 2027 with no month.

We have not tested Atlas, its software or any task described here. We read the Boston Dynamics release of September 21, 2026, the company’s post of January 5, 2026, Hyundai Motor Group’s release of the same day and the Metaplant’s website, and we compared them line by line.

## Sources

- [Boston Dynamics press release, September 21, 2026](https://bostondynamics.com/news/boston-dynamics-opens-robotics-metaplant-application-center-to-train-humanoid-robots-for-manufacturing-tasks/)
- [Hyundai Motor Group release on its AI Robotics Strategy, January 5, 2026](https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/newsroom/detail/0000001100)