Behind the scenes: How Hyundai Motor taught Atlas the 'ghost rabona kick' that stunned Son Heung-min

Hyundai Motor Co released a making film on its official YouTube channel Thursday, pulling back the curtain on how Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas learned to perform advanced soccer moves as part of the company's FIFA World Cup 2026 campaign, "School of Football."

"School of Football" is part of Hyundai Motor's broader FIFA World Cup campaign, "The Future Starts Here," and follows Atlas as it masters soccer movements to push the boundaries of robotics technology — carrying the message that the future of robotics is being realized today.

Particularly striking was Atlas executing not only basic soccer moves such as footwork, passing and shooting, but also high-difficulty techniques including the "ghost rabona kick," a variation of the classic rabona in which the kicking leg crosses behind the standing leg.

The launch film and three training videos released through May 28 accumulated more than 33 million views within five days of going live. A video of Hyundai Motor brand ambassador Son Heung-min reacting with amazement to Atlas's performance was also released May 27, drawing wide attention.

The making film details the research process behind Atlas's soccer performance in the earlier campaign videos, along with behind-the-scenes stories from the development team.

Boston Dynamics researchers explained that for a humanoid robot to move more naturally, it must learn balance, timing, coordination and adaptability simultaneously — and that soccer was chosen as the vehicle for that learning precisely because it demands all four at once.

Hyundai Motor and Boston Dynamics designed Atlas's training program drawing on the biomechanics and movement patterns of world-class soccer players. The players' movements were then converted into trainable motion data and action protocols, which were applied to Atlas's learning process.

Researchers first used a motion capture system to collect soccer players' movements, then performed a retargeting process to adapt those movements to Atlas's physical structure. Reinforcement learning was then used to have the robot repeatedly practice the resulting motions.

Atlas also ran thousands of simulations simultaneously in a cloud GPU environment. Through this process, the robot can experience the equivalent of roughly one year of human trial and error in just 24 hours, allowing it to rapidly acquire complex movements through large-scale parallel learning.

Researchers said that movements learned in simulation are applied to the physical Atlas robot and in most cases execute stably from the very first attempt. Any errors that emerge during testing are fed back into the learning process for continuous performance improvement.

Soccer is particularly demanding because it requires the entire body to adjust to a rapidly changing environment, calling for a high level of control. Atlas addresses this through "whole-body control" technology, which integrates every joint in the body into a single unified system to maintain balance and movement at the same time.

The making film also walks through the development of the ghost rabona kick, the high-difficulty technique Atlas performs in the campaign.

"The ghost rabona kick is an advanced soccer move that adds a feinting motion to deceive a defender on top of the standard rabona kick," the researchers said. "We recorded a soccer player performing the move, converted it to fit Atlas's physical structure, and then realized it on the actual robot through AI training."

They added that the movements Atlas learns through soccer go beyond sports skills and play an important role in advancing robotics technology. "Through kicking motions, for example, the robot develops timing, force generation and coordination, while more complex movements build rotational motion, weight transfer and whole-body control," they said.

Boston Dynamics has been using a series of recently released demonstrations to further highlight Atlas's capabilities. Earlier, Atlas drew attention by lifting a refrigerator weighing approximately 23 kilograms and placing it precisely on a table, showcasing exceptional whole-body control in handling heavy objects.

"We will continue to advance Atlas's movement capabilities through diverse challenges like soccer in partnership with Boston Dynamics," a Hyundai Motor official said.