Boston Dynamics, Inc., is an American engineering and robotics design company founded in 1992 as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Boston Dynamics has been owned by the Hyundai Motor Group since December 2020, but it only completed the acquisition in June 2021.

[4] Robert Playter was also a co-founder of the company, joining a few months later, as soon as he completed his PhD thesis at MIT working with Raibert in the Leg Laboratory.

[5] Early in the company's history, it worked with the American Systems Corporation under a contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD) to replace naval training videos for aircraft launch operations with interactive 3D computer simulations featuring characters made with DI-Guy, software for realistic human simulation.

[6] Eventually the company started making physical robots—for example, BigDog was a quadruped robot designed for the U.S. military with funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

[18] BigDog was a quadrupedal robot created in 2005 by Boston Dynamics, in conjunction with Foster-Miller, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Harvard University Concord Field Station.

[citation needed] It was funded by DARPA in the hopes that it would be able to serve as a robotic pack mule to accompany soldiers in terrain too rough for vehicles, but the project was shelved after BigDog was deemed too loud to be used in combat.

Called "the world's most ambitious legged robot", it was designed to carry 340 pounds (150 kg) alongside a soldier at 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h; 1.8 m/s), traversing rough terrain at inclines up to 35 degrees.

[30] According to Lt. Col. Joe Hitt and the US Marine Corps's program manager, "The vision for LS3 is to combine the capabilities of a pack mule with the intelligence of a trained animal".

LS3 is capable of reacting to visual or oral commands and uses an on-board GPS system, along with computer vision (LIDAR and IR), to guide itself through terrain.

[citation needed] In February 2016 Boston Dynamics published a YouTube video entitled "Atlas, The Next Generation" showing a new humanoid robot about 5 feet tall (152.4 cm).

[32] A video posted to the Boston Dynamics channel of YouTube dated October 11, 2018, titled "Parkour Atlas", shows the robot easily running up 2-foot high steps onto a platform.

[35] In November 2017, a promotional video of Spot using its forward claw to open a door for another robot reached #1 on YouTube, with over 2 million views.

[36][37][38] On May 11, 2018, Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert announced at TechCrunch Robotics Session 2018 that Spot was in pre-production and preparing for commercial availability in 2019.

[41] In November 2019 Massachusetts State Police became the first law enforcement agency to use Spot as a robot cop, as well as in the unit's bomb squad.

[46] In November 2020, a Spot robot performed inspection tasks on the Skarv floating production storage and offloading vessel.

[48][49] In March 2022, artist Agnieszka Pilat sold a painting created by Spot for $40,000 at the home of Brian Boitano to benefit Ukrainian refugees.

It has a square mobile base containing a set of wheels, a “perception mast” with cameras and other sensors, and a robotic arm with seven degrees of freedom and a suction pad array on the end that can grab and move boxes up to 23 kilograms (50 lbs) in weight.

Its integrated thermal camera and 3D LiDAR system help detect nearby people, monitor fire hazards, and recognize open and closed doors.