The vision of the metacosm is on display at modern CES: Boston Dynamics robots are in a big position

When Hyundai acquired robot maker Boston Dynamics last year, people weren't sure what to expect from the company. At CES 2022, however, the automaker's intentions for cutting-edge robotics became clearer as it outlined a vision of a metacosm in which robots could be used to connect physical and virtual worlds.

In 2021, as Facebook's parent company, Meta, wholeheartedly embraced the concept of virtual social space, the concept of a metaverse gained traction. With the metacosm hailed as the next Internet, it's estimated that every tech company is starting to figure out how to use the space and contribute to it. Modern times are no exception.

At Tuesday's Las Vegas tech show, the South Korean company revealed its mission to make space, time and distance irrelevant with the help of robots. When you're in one place, the robot will act as an agent or "digital twin" by becoming your eyes, ears, and other sensory organs to allow you to experience another place and let you interact with the environment around the robot.

In a video presented by Hyundai at its CES event, the company presents an example of how it imagines this kind of work. The video depicts a little girl and her father using Boston Dynamics' Spot robot to explore Mars in the metaverse, which will actually exist on the Red Planet.

The idea is that Spot could plot data and images that would allow the father and daughter to experience the Martian landscape in real time. The robot could make measurements — including the wind speed of a dust storm and the temperature of rocks — in order to replicate these sensory aspects on Earth, and the technology will allow people to feel the blowing of the Martian wind on their faces or the cold of Martian stones at their fingertips.

Modern President Chang Song said in a statement: "Building on the immersive 'immersive' agent experience offered by the metaverse, robots will become an extension of our own bodily senses and allow us to reshape and enrich our daily lives. ”

Hyundai doesn't fully explain how these technologies work, and the company imagines it all happening in a future metaspace platform that is not limited by current VR headsets. The company is now more focused on helping us understand the role robots will play in enhancing these future metaspaces.

In a press release, Hyundai gave an example of allowing workers to remotely control industrial robots from within the metaverse. It also envisions people using robots to feed and hug their pets and provide meaningful interactions for both parties when they leave home. But whether a cat or dog is willing to be embraced by a robot — or even a robot that feeds it — is likely to be another question.