Belmont Resident Working on Boston Dynamics Atlas Robot Discusses Humanoid Research

BELMONT — August 8, 2025 — Belmont Journal profiles a Boston Dynamics engineer living in town who is teaching humanoid robots new behaviors. Andrea Daniele, a robotics engineer on the Atlas behavior learning team at Boston Dynamics, appeared on the community-access program's "Meet Your Neighbor" segment August 8, hosted by Jeff Hansel. Daniele described his role as teaching the Atlas humanoid robot discrete physical tasks, showed video of Atlas scanning a room for misplaced objects and returning them to correct locations, and explained that the job requires close coordination between mechanical and behavioral engineering teams. He also described prior work on Nui, a deep-sea under-ice robot developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with NASA funding, and named Europa — a moon of Jupiter with possible liquid water — as an ultimate target for robotic exploration. "I personally want to know what's swimming in that ocean," he said. Daniele, originally from Calabria, Italy, has lived in Belmont for about three years; his wife, Erica DeTuro, volunteers in editing and production at the Belmont Media Center.