Aya Durbin on Turning Atlas Into a Real Industrial Robot

**Aya Durbin** (0:00)
We built a robot that can lift up to 110 pounds, work in hot environments. The tasks we're looking at doing early on are not tasks that are easy to hire for. They cannot find enough people to work in these jobs. I'm a product person, I care about delivering real value to customers that provides positive ROI, because I don't believe that humanoids will ever become ubiquitous in society if we can't prove that.
Our plan for deployment of Atlas is to start deploying actual pilots out in the world with customers in 2028

**Brian Heater** (0:29)
It's kind of wild to be at this stage where we're talking about early deployments of the system and some of the really deep, important things still haven't been cracked.

**Aya Durbin** (0:38)
Yes.

**Brian Heater** (0:39)
As a pragmatic product, it must keep you up at night sometimes.

**Aya Durbin** (0:42)
It definitely does. There are parts of the problem that haven't been solved yet.

**Brian Heater** (0:46)
There's so many moving parts, there's so many variables here. There's got to be at least some acceptance that things are going to shift, things are going to move around a bit.

**Aya Durbin** (0:56)
I mean, they could, but they could also...

**Brian Heater** (1:09)
Hello, and welcome to Automated. I'm Brian Heater, the Managing Editor at the Association for Advancing Automation. Very excited to bring you this conversation with Aya Durbin, the Director of Product for Atlas. This rose recorded at Boston Dynamics HQ.
Aya was previously at Six River Systems and has a long history of productizing industrial robots. And I think that is very much reflected in this pragmatic conversation about what it will ultimately take to get humanoids out into the world. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to like and subscribe. Check out our newsletter over at Automated.fm. And with that, here is Aya Durbin of Boston Dynamics. You know, we talk a lot about what's coming up next in automation on the show. But if you really want to see the future in motion, you've got to be there in person. Automate 2026 is where the world's leading innovators, builders and dreamers come together to show you what's possible. Robots, AI, machine vision, motion control, you name it, all automation under one roof. And as part of Automate this year, the Humanoid Robot Forum brings together leaders, engineers and researchers for a two-day deep dive into the real world development, deployment and commercialization of Humanoid robotics. Register for free at automateshow.com to join us in Chicago. June 22nd through the 25th. We will see you there.
You're a pragmatist who has been converted into a dreamer.

**Aya Durbin** (2:40)
I am. I would say I'm a dreamer that still is a pragmatist at heart. But working at Boston Dynamics has definitely proven to me that the dreams can become valuable customer solutions. Like ultimately, that's why I'm a pragmatist, because I'm a product person. I care about delivering real value to customers that provides positive ROI, because I don't believe that humanoids will ever become ubiquitous in society if we can't prove that.
I think the way in which I've become a dreamer is seeing here at Boston Dynamics what it looks like to transform a whole robotic solution to an AI-based approach. And to have the team so focused on proving that that AI-based approach can actually provide value to customers has made me think more outside of the box of how we take a fully AI-based system and translate that into something that customers can train, instruct, and get to do what they want it to do in their workforce. Like ultimately, humanoids have to be a trusted and reliable member of the workforce. And the team here has made me a dreamer because they've proven to me over and over and over again that it's possible to do that in new ways that we've never seen before in robotics. So, it's been a very fun few years here. I see that kind of come to life.

**Brian Heater** (3:58)
We're not going to obviously beat the dead horse of legs versus wheels because that's been spoken about a lot. But people who listen to you talk about that on one of the webinars that you did. But I think that that is an interesting distinction here because you do have to be a bit of a dreamer in order to be on team leg because that is much more of a long-term solution, right? I mean, if the goal is to, hey, let's get to ROI and let's get these things out in the field as quickly as possible, like you're going to put wheels on them, right?

**Aya Durbin** (4:34)