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The evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and its propelling advancements in robotics and autonomous driving are two of the key themes of the CES 2026 technology conference in Las Vegas this week.
On Monday, chip giant Nvidia unveiled its autonomous driving plans, while Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics publicly demonstrated its humanoid robot Atlas for the first time, marking it as no longer a prototype.
Here are some of the key advancements unveiled by the companies.
Hyundai said Atlas reduces repetitive human physical tasks such as carrying objects, which reduces human physical burden by performing higher-risk tasks; laying the “groundwork for robot commercialisation and collaborative human-robot environment”.
At the event, the robot walked around the stage for some minutes and waved at the crowd.
The company said a product version of the robot that will help assemble cars is already in production and will be deployed by 2028 at Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing facility near Georgia, in the United States.
Hyundai also revealed an entire robot strategy, including a so-called MobED Droid, a wheeled ‘bot that can cover various terrain, which scored a CES 2026 Innovation Award as the show opened this week.
Boston Dynamics also made it into the Nvidia press conference, which was happening simultaneously with Hyundai’s.
The chip giant announced a strategic AI partnership with Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind.
“The ChatGPT moment for robotics is here. Breakthroughs in physical AI — models that understand the real world, reason and plan actions — are unlocking entirely new applications,” said Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang.
Huang also brought robots on stage, but these were the small Star Wars robots, of BDX droids. Though not as useful as the Atlas robot, as they probably can’t carry much, they are very cute.
Nvidia takes to the roads
Meanwhile, the other important message from Nvidia is its autonomous driving plans.
The company also has a pilot, which will launch in the new Mercedes-Benz CLA, which Nvidia said would launch in the United States in the first quarter and in Europe by the second, followed by Asian roads.
The technology that underpins this is called Alphamayo, which Nvidia unveiled on Monday.
Alphamayo is a set of open source artificial intelligence (AI) models, datasets, and simulation tools that are used to train physical robots and vehicles.
It works by helping the autonomous vehicles reason through various driving situations, such as traffic at intersections.
“Not only does [Alpamayo] take sensor input and activate the steering wheel, brakes, and acceleration,” Huang said.
“It also reasons about what action it’s about to take. It tells you what action it’s going to take, and the reasons by which it came about that action. And then, of course, the trajectory.”
The technology is open source, meaning other companies can fine-tune the technology to their needs.