AEON

AEON, developed by Hexagon Robotics—a division of the Swedish-Swiss technology giant Hexagon AB—is a groundbreaking humanoid robot unveiled in June 2025 at the Hexagon LIVE Global event. Standing at 165 cm tall and weighing 60 kg, AEON is engineered for industrial environments like automotive, aerospace, manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing, addressing acute labor shortages through superior agility, versatility, and spatial awareness. Unlike legged humanoids prone to balance issues in dynamic factories, AEON integrates wheels into its feet for 'ready-to-roll' mobility, achieving a top sprint speed of 2.4 m/s (8.6 km/h) while weaving through tight aisles under 15 kg payloads. Its 34 degrees of freedom enable fluid upper-body gestures, full-body balance, and dexterous manipulation with 10-fingered hands, supporting tasks from precise part inspection to heavy pallet handling. Architecturally, AEON fuses Hexagon's proprietary precision measurement technologies with advanced mechatronics: a lightweight aluminum alloy frame clad in composite shell for durability in harsh settings. High-performance electric actuators from maxon provide precision and load stability, powering locomotion across varied terrains. The multimodal sensor suite—integrating RGB cameras, depth sensors, LiDAR, force/torque feedback, and Hexagon's scanning tech—delivers centimeter-accurate 3D spatial mapping, enabling reality capture for digital twins via HxDR platform and Reality Cloud Studio. This feeds into AI-driven mission control for real-time environmental reasoning and task prioritization. At its core, AEON leverages NVIDIA's full-stack robotics ecosystem. Onboard NVIDIA Jetson Orin handles edge AI for motion planning, spatial reasoning, and LLM inference, with upgrades to NVIDIA IGX Thor for functional safety in human-collaborative ops. Training occurs via NVIDIA Omniverse on OVX servers, using Isaac Sim for photorealistic simulation of navigation/manipulation and Isaac Lab for reinforcement learning policy refinement. Hexagon is fine-tuning NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1.5 foundation models for enhanced reasoning/policies, supplemented by GR00T-Mimic for synthetic motion from human demos. Microsoft Azure scales cloud training. This simulation-first approach slashed locomotion skill development from months to 2-3 weeks, ensuring sim-to-real transfer. Deployment history began immediately post-launch with pilots at Schaeffler (German industrial manufacturer) and Pilatus Aircraft (Swiss aerospace), testing manipulation, machine tending, part inspection, and reality capture. Results show 40% faster QC scans and 99.9% accuracy in production environments. Hot-swappable lithium batteries (4-hour runtime each) enable 24/7 operation via auto-swap docks, minimizing downtime. Commercial rollout targets early 2026, with early Jetson Thor access accelerating perception enhancements. Safe for human proximity (cobotic design), Ethernet/Wi-Fi 6 connectivity uploads data to cloud. Running Linux, AEON exemplifies 'physical AI' bridging sensors/actuators with industrial needs, positioning Hexagon as a leader in autonomous humanoids.