Boston Dynamics robot Credit: Boston Dynamics Dynamic Creatures, a Boston Dynamics spinoff, has launched to build robots for theme parks and retail, writing software and buying hardware from Unitree, AgiBot and Boston Dynamics. Europe’s Machinery Regulation covers AI safety functions from January 2027, and the French company that created this category was sold to a Shenzhen buyer last year. Dynamic Creatures, a Boston Dynamics spinoff, has launched out of stealth to build robots for theme parks and retail, Semafor reported. It writes the software and buys hardware from Unitree, AgiBot and Boston Dynamics.
Chief executive Marc Theermann said safety has to be rethought “from the ground up“, because he wants robots people will be comfortable hugging. Boston Dynamics is not doing this itself. Character development “just isn’t our core space or area of expertise“, said Nikolas Noel, its vice-president of marketing and communications. The engineering problems are unglamorous.
Whether a costume blocks a vision system or makes the robot overheat is the kind of thing this category brings. Nobody has said which parks, or when. Two of the three named hardware suppliers, Unitree and AgiBot, are Chinese. Boston Dynamics itself is majority owned by Hyundai.
Europe already has a rulebook for the thing Theermann is describing. The Machinery Regulation replaces the machinery directive on 20 January 2027, and covers AI-based safety functions and machinery with self-evolving behaviour for the first time. Both categories need a notified body rather than a self-declaration. Specifications that limit how fast or how far a machine moves count as safety functions under it.
A robot deciding how firmly to hold a child sits squarely inside them. Europe also used to own this category outright. Aldebaran, the Paris company behind Nao and Pepper, shipped about 20,000 and 17,000 of them into 70 countries, The Robot Report said. Aldebaran was founded in Paris in 2005.
It filed for bankruptcy in February last year and was placed in receivership in June. In July, Maxvision of Shenzhen bought the core assets behind Nao and Pepper. So the entertainment robot is being rebuilt by an American software company on mostly Chinese hardware, in a category a French firm created and then sold to a Chinese buyer. Paris has not given up on humanoids.
UMA, founded by a former Tesla Optimus researcher, is building one there and says it will take Europe first. The rules arrive in January 2027, which is roughly when a robot built to be hugged would reach a European theme park.
