Hexagon has launched AEON, a humanoid “physical AI” robot, at its annual customer event in Las Vegas, USA.
Culminating 10 years of development, the unit has been “specifically designed to meet real-world customer needs and address labour shortages”, according to Hexagon, which says it has worked with NVIDIA, Microsoft and maxon to bring AEON to market.
“Hexagon is one of the best-placed companies in the world to lead and shape the field of humanoid robotics,” Hexagon chair Ola Rollen said at the Hexagon LIVE event. “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.”
Hexagon has created a standalone robotics division to advance its position in the space.
Division president Arnaud Robert said AEON would be deployed over the next six months in “production environments” before Hexagon expanded its commercial rollout.
The division was partnering with Germany’s Schaeffler and Swiss aircraft manufacturer Pilatus to pilot AEON across manipulation, machine tending, part inspection and reality capture use cases, he said.
Pilatus manufacturing vice president Roman Emmenegger said the company saw AEON as 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 digitisation in our daily operations,” he said.
