BOSTON — A new robotics company founded by two Boston Dynamics veterans emerged from stealth Sept. 8 with plans to build mobile robot characters for theme parks, hotels and other hospitality venues. 

Dynamic Creatures has an exclusive partner agreement with Boston Dynamics to build robotics for the entertainment and hospitality industries, and is already testing characters with a theme park and a retailer on guest experiences, said the firm, neither of which it identified by name. It also said it is funded by several institutional investors in the US and Europe, and two individual investors including the founder of Boston Dynamics. The company didn't state how much capital it raised. 

The venture's CEO and co-founder Marc Theermann previously served as chief strategy officer at Boston Dynamics, and before that was in a senior management role at Google Inc. An expert in strategic management, he said he also helped build the company's commercial sales operation. Also, Farbod Farshidian is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer; he previously worked as a research leader at the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Institute. He contributed learning-based control with the use of Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot, said the company. 

Dynamic Creatures plans to build a character on a variety of robots such as Boston Dynamics-made ones, and even entirely custom robots to work with the particular brands and stories. It showed off Snow Jay, a robotics and artificial intelligence that can help robots "talk to and interact" with individualguests rather than operate on pre-set routines. Dynamic Creatures also says that customers can deploy an entire fleet of robots on an a subscription basis – that does not require an up-front purchase – "within a few months." The company's claims were unsubstantiated, the outlet reported.   

Amanda McMaster, interim CEO of Boston Dynamics, said in a statement that Dynamic Creatures is "opening an important new frontier for advanced robotics." 

The company said platform-based characters can be deployed in months and that it is offering leasing arrangements so venues can add robots without a large upfront purchase. Neither claim has been independently verified.  

Dynamic Creatures said it is backed by U.S. and European institutional investors, including Eniac Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Heliad, Sunshine Lake and BlueGrass Ventures, plus angel investors Marc Raibert, the Boston Dynamics founder, and Lukas Ziegler. The company did not disclose a funding amount. 

Initial target markets include theme parks, hotels, casinos, museums, cultural institutions, cruise ships and live venues. The company said it may later expand into film and TV production, luxury retail and automotive showrooms.  

The theme park and retail partnerships that Dynamic Creatures cites as evidence of early traction remain unnamed, and the company has not said when its robots will first appear in front of the public.