Dynamic Creatures Introduces Hugo the Furry Purple Robot Built for Theme Parks

Hugo appears as a purple, furry figure with small horns, a blue nose, a flower tucked into its hair, oversized hands, and either embroidered shorts or leather lederhosen. In video released by the Cambridge startup Dynamic Creatures, this bipedal character walks through an office, high-fives engineers, hugs children, and dances while carrying a small backpack. The company calls it the first living character robot, meant to move freely among people rather than stay fixed in one spot like traditional park figures.

Dynamic Creatures was founded by Marc Theermann, former chief strategy officer at Boston Dynamics and a senior big cheese at Google, and Farbod Farshidian, a robotics whizkid who led the research team at the Robotics and AI Institute and helped develop the natural walking systems on Boston Dynamics’ Atlas. In early September 2026, the company emerged from behind the scenes as Boston Dynamics’ official partner for all entertainment and hospitality work. Not surprisingly, Boston Dynamics’ founder, Marc Raibert, is one of the angel investors. To give you an idea of their potential, they created a second prototype called Danielle, a lavender poodle based on the Boston Dynamics Spot platform. So they may either dress up an existing robot in a new costume or create a brand new frame from the ground up.

Hugo, the company’s flagship figure, now uses a robotic platform with 43 actuators that are essentially buried beneath this cool, soft suit. Its movement is generated by mixing motion-capture data or animation files with a fancy-schmancy thing called reinforcement learning, which gives the robot’s gait and gestures a rather lifelike appearance.


Underneath it all, they have this software layer called SnowJay, which handles real-time perception, behavior sequencing, and switching between different skills while pulling out all the stops safely. They’re also working on a new model that allows the robot to link what it sees and hears to body language, posture, and even facial cues. So the robot’s response may differ based on who is present.


They believe that theme parks, hotels, resorts, casinos, museums, and cruise ships will be their largest markets. Instead of simply letting the thing go wild, they’ll be implementing “controlled pilot deployments” that combine teleoperation, partial autonomy, and good old-fashioned puppeteering. They’re also discussing a leasing option so that parks and hotels can get their hands on some characters without having to pay for the equipment. The first of these trial programs will begin in early 2027. Until then, Hugo is essentially an in-house project, and they’re not going to reveal too much about it, including finer specifics like the exact leg layout and sensor suite.