Boston Dynamics CTO: Real-World Robot Deployment Requires Customer Understanding and Industry Scale
In an interview, Boston Dynamics CTO Zachary Jackowski explains that moving robots from breakthrough demos to reliable, scalable products requires deep customer understanding and the industrial backing of Hyundai Motor…
- 2026
What Happened
Zachary Jackowski, Chief Product and Technology Officer of Boston Dynamics, discusses the challenges of moving robotics from the lab to customer sites. He emphasizes that building an extraordinary machine is only the beginning; the real work involves making robots reliable, practical, and scalable. Jackowski led the design of Spot, a four-legged robot that transitioned from breakthrough locomotion to commercial deployment.
“The thing I’m most proud of over my time at Boston Dynamics has been getting the Spot product to the point where customers use it for real work, and like it enough to scale their fleets to many tens of Spots.”
“Hyundai’s ability to leverage its scale to make ambitious projects possible has been amazing.”
“The pace of advancement in AI is changing what our robots are capable of and how they do it at a pace we’ve never seen before. That unlocks new possibilities every day.”
For new engineers joining Boston Dynamics, Jackowski says they receive real responsibility immediately and work with leading technologies. He looks for candidates who are top technically but also thrive in teams and can handle uncertainty. The combination of deep robotics expertise, product responsibility, and Hyundai Motor Group's industrial capacity makes groundbreaking work possible.
Why this matters
This interview shows that advanced robotics is not just about cool technology but about making products practical for real-world use. It highlights the role of large corporate groups like Hyundai Motor Group in providing the scale and resources needed to commercialize robots. Engineers and buyers can see the path from research to deployment, where customer understanding and industrial capacity are key.
Terms in This Story
- Physical AI
- A concept where artificial intelligence is integrated into physical systems, such as robots, to enable them to perceive, reason, and act in the real world.
- actuator
- A component that converts energy into motion, used to control the movement of a robot's joints or mechanisms.
Summarised from the linked release; details can be imperfect — always verify against the original source.