Boston Dynamics Veteran's Startup Unveils Furry Robot Hugo

Dynamic Creatures, a Cambridge startup led by a former Boston Dynamics executive, released a video on October 13 showing Hugo, a furry humanoid robot designed to work in theme parks, hotels and retail stores rather than factories or warehouses, according to the Boston Globe.

The video shows the big-eyed machine walking through the company's office, high-fiving engineers and hugging children. Chief executive Marc Theermann, who was chief strategy officer at Waltham-based Boston Dynamics, said he joined that company with the intention of eventually starting Dynamic Creatures. The startup has partnered with Boston Dynamics and draws on much of its technology, the Globe reported.

Hugo is a prototype, the first in a planned series of robots built to interact with people in everyday settings. The company said it is developing artificial intelligence that would let the robot move through unfamiliar environments with little training, along with software allowing it to answer human questions in real time. For now, the robot in the video is teleoperated by a remote human operator, because the system cannot yet be trusted with fully autonomous physical contact with people.

Boston Dynamics, owned by South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group, makes the Atlas humanoid, truck-unloading robots and the Spot quadruped used for industrial inspection, security patrols and search-and-rescue work.

Theermann said he is "100 percent certain that we will all have a robot in our home in 10 years."

This story was first reported by The Boston Globe.