Hexagon describes its AEON robot as “a humanoid built for industry.” (Photo: Hexagon/PRNewswire)
Hexagon’s new robot is expected to help improve safety and drive autonomy across the automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing sectors.
STOCKHOLM—A new humanoid robot introduced by measurement technology company Hexagon is designed specifically to meet real-world customer needs and address labor shortages. Hexagon launched the humanoid robot, AEON, at its flagship Hexagon LIVE Global event in June, the company said in a release.
AEON, developed by Hexagon’s previously announced Robotics division, combines Hexagon’s sensor suite with advanced locomotion, AI-driven mission control, and spatial intelligence. The combination is said to provide “exceptional agility, versatility, and awareness.”
“This powerful combination enables AEON to address a wide range of industrial applications—from manipulation and asset inspection to reality capture and operator support,” the release stated.
AEON is expected to help improve safety and drive autonomy across sectors such as automotive, aerospace, transportation, manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics.
“Hexagon’s legacy in precision measurement and sensor technologies has always been about enabling next-generation autonomy,” said Hexagon Chairman of the Board Ola Rollén, in a statement. “For the past 10 years, we’ve been working on robotics innovation across our divisions.”
Rollén went on to say, “AEON represents a state-of-the-art, industrially bespoke humanoid. It’s a leap forward in our goal to help customers drive sustainable growth in the face of structural demographic changes.”
According to Hexagon, AEON’s innovative capabilities include agility, awareness, and versatility. With its combination of dexterity and locomotion, the robot can move around quickly while also performing tasks that require high accuracy—thanks to Hexagon’s proprietary precision measurement technologies, the company said.
AEON brings together spatial intelligence and reasoning, merging data from multimodal sensors to understand the environment and optimize the mission, given the task at hand. It is also built to perform a wide variety of tasks, from picking specific objects and scanning industrial components for inspection, to creating digital twins through digital reality capture and teleoperation.
It does all of this while leveraging an end-to-end training approach. And with a unique battery swapping mechanism, AEON does not need to recharge to continue to operate, according to Hexagon.
“With AEON, we’re advancing physical AI to tackle real operational challenges—bridging cutting-edge technology with practical industry needs,” said Arnaud Robert, president of Hexagon’s Robotics division, in the release. “We have engaged with many industry leaders already, and over the next six months, we’ll be deploying AEON in production environments before expanding our commercial rollout.”
Hexagon’s Robotics division is partnering with Schaeffler and Pilatus to pilot AEON across use cases that include manipulation, machine tending, part inspection, and reality capture.
“Consistent with our long history of innovation and always in pursuit of excellence, we are pleased to collaborate with Hexagon’s Robotics division to explore humanoid solutions in our factories,” said Pilatus Vice President of Manufacturing Roman Emmenegger, in the release. “Facing today’s challenges of manufacturing in Switzerland, we believe that AEON will become a contributing solution in sustaining our competitiveness in more-than-ever tougher global markets. Its unique locomotion, sensors, and on-board intelligence provides for agility and versatility and opens a multitude of opportunities to drive automation and digitization in our daily operations.”
“By leveraging disruptive technologies such as humanoid robots, Schaeffler paves the way to becoming the leading motion technology company,” added Sebastian Jonas, senior vice president of advanced production technology at Schaeffler, in the release. “We are excited to pilot Hexagon Robotics’ humanoid solutions across a range of use cases in our factories, and to share our decades of knowledge in the fields of manufacturing and vertical integration.”
Hexagon’s Robotics division has established strong partnerships with technology leaders NVIDIA, Microsoft, and maxon to bring AEON to the market. AEON is powered by NVIDIA accelerated computing, NVIDIA Omniverse, and NVIDIA Jetson.
“Microsoft Azure’s platform enables scalable development and on-demand training of AEON’s capabilities,” the release stated. “And maxon’s next generation actuators power AEON’s unique and efficient locomotion across multiple environments.”