South Korean auto giant Hyundai Motor Group has acquired full control of robotics company Boston Dynamics. The company bought the remaining 9.65 percent stake owned by Japanese investment holding SoftBank Group for $325 million.
Hyundai now owns all of Boston Dynamics' robotics technologies and plans to widely use humanoid robots in manufacturing. The company's goal is to delegate some physical work to robots. In particular, the humanoid Atlas robots will perform tasks such as transporting heavy car parts and placing them in a certain sequence on the production floor.
It should be noted that Hyundai acquired an 80 percent stake in Boston Dynamics in 2021 for about $900 million. At that time, the total value of the company was estimated at about $1.1 billion.
Hyundai plans to produce and test at least 60,000 robots over the next two years. The company believes that although full automation in the industry is not yet possible in the near future, the integration of robots into the production process should be accelerated.
The first use of Atlas robots in a real production process is expected to begin in 2028 at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, USA. Here, the robots will work alongside humans to perform various production operations.
