Hexagon launches AEON humanoid powered by NVIDIA

Digital reality software services and measurement technology provider Hexagon has developed a humanoid robot.

The humanoid - named AEON - was launched by Hexagon’s previously announced Robotics division, and made its debut at Hexagon LIVE Global in Las Vegas.

Humanoid for customer needs to address labor shortages

Hexagon said AEON been specifically designed to meet real-world customer needs and address labor shortages. AEON combines Hexagon’s sensor suite with advanced locomotion, AI-driven mission control, and spatial intelligence to deliver exceptional agility, versatility, and awareness.

The company said this combination enables AEON to address a wide range of industrial applications - from manipulation and asset inspection to reality capture and operator support.

Hexagon added that AEON will help to 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. For the past 10 years, we’ve been working on robotics innovation across our divisions,” said Ola Rollén, Chairman of the Board, Hexagon. “Hexagon is one of the best-placed companies in the world to lead and shape the field of humanoid robotics. 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. I’m proud to see AEON come to life.”

Hexagon’s Robotics division has established 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. And maxon's actuators power AEON's unique and efficient locomotion across multiple environments.

Some of AEON’s capabilities include:

• Agility: Combining dexterity and locomotion, AEON can move around quickly while also performing tasks that require high accuracy thanks to Hexagon’s proprietary precision measurement technologies.

• Awareness: Bringing together spatial intelligence and reasoning, AEON merges data from multimodal sensors to understand the environment and optimize the mission given the task at hand.

• Versatility: AEON is 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 - all utilizing an end-to-end training approach.

• Power autonomy: With a unique battery swapping mechanism, AEON does not need to recharge to continue to operate.

“With AEON, we’re advancing physical AI to tackle real operational challenges - bridging cutting-edge technology with practical industry needs,” said Arnaud Robert, president, Hexagon’s Robotics division. “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.”

AEON pilot programs with Schaeffler, Pilatus

Hexagon’s Robotics division is partnering with Schaeffler and Pilatus to pilot AEON across manipulation, machine tending, part inspection and reality capture use cases.

“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 Roman Emmenegger, VP of manufacturing, Pilatus. “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 onboard 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,” said Sebastian Jonas, senior vice president, advanced production technology, Schaeffler. “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.”