Hexagon, the manufacturing and measurement systems specialist, has unveiled a “humanoid” robot in partnership with tech leaders Microsoft and NVIDIA. The “AEON” bot has various practical use cases across industry verticals, including manufacturing, supply chain and logistics.
The wraps were taken off AEON at this week’s Hexagon LIVE Global customer and partner event in Las Vegas. While it might not look that different from the robots first displayed at Tokyo trade fairs in the 1970s and 1980s, it comes with more intelligence, and is less likely to get stuck or run out of battery, going by the demonstration we were shown.
Arnaud Robert (pictured), president of Hexagon's new robotics division, told us the company was acting now to help address global labour shortages caused by lower birth rates in the West, and rapidly ageing populations in countries like China and Japan.
“When it comes to humans and robots working together, we have learned the robots having a similar form factor is best and AEON is the answer. Humanoids can learn more effectively when working alongside humans.”
The form factor doesn’t go as far as the feet though, as AEON is on wheels, deemed as the fastest and most efficient transport mechanism around factories and warehouses.
AEON comes with 22 Hexagon sensors and 12 different cameras, and AI-driven mission control and spatial intelligence from NVIDIA computers. Training and analytics processing is done through the Microsoft Azure cloud, and next generation actuators from maxon power efficient locomotion across multiple environments.
Hexagon reckons AEON will help to “improve safety and drive autonomy” across sectors such as automotive, aerospace, transportation, manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics.
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 optimise the mission given
-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
-Power autonomy: With a “unique” self battery swapping mechanism, AEON does not need to recharge to continue to operate
Robert said: “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 is already partnering with motion technology specialist Schaeffler and Swiss plane manufacturer Pilatus to pilot AEON across manipulation, machine tending, part inspection, and reality capture use cases. Robert said other test deployments with other firms will follow.
