Before joining the faculty at CMU in 2000, he was an Assistant, then Associate Professor in the department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT from 1986-1993, an Associate Professor at the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology from 1994 to 2000.
Atkenson's work in soft robotics helped influence production on the 2014 Disney film Big Hero 6, and he consulted with the film's production team on the design of Baymax [REF].