Labour shortages, demographic shifts and rising complexity are forcing manufacturers to move beyond automation. A new generation of humanoid robots is emerging to tackle real-world operational needs, fusing spatial intelligence with physical dexterity to reshape the future of work.
Manufacturing has spent decades chasing efficiency through automation. Yet the increasing pace of change, coupled with ageing populations and labour shortages across developed economies, is forcing a rethink. The conversation is no longer about automating isolated tasks but about enabling flexible, adaptive systems that can operate in dynamic environments with minimal supervision. This is where autonomy diverges from traditional automation, not simply executing pre-programmed instructions but responding intelligently to unstructured situations.
This shift is driven not only by technology but by macroeconomic realities. “The demographic crisis unfolding across the globe is reshaping the availability of labour,” Arnaud Robert, President of Hexagon’s Robotics division, says. “In the United States, population trends suggest a contraction from 340 million to 225 million within 70 years if current behaviours persist. Europe faces a similar decline, and in China, the situation is even more severe. Projections show that by 2078, retirees will outnumber the total working population aged 15 to 64. The implications for industry are profound: fewer workers, greater operational pressure, and increased need for intelligent machines that can fill the gaps.”
Why humanoids make sense
It is within this context that Hexagon has introduced AEON, a humanoid robot purpose-built for industrial environments. But AEON is not a science fiction flourish. The case for humanoids, when stripped of novelty, is grounded in two pragmatic truths. First, the world was built for human form factors. Industrial infrastructure, tools, and workflows are already optimised for the human body, meaning humanoid robots can integrate into existing operations without requiring significant re-engineering.
Second, the teaching process becomes significantly more efficient when the robot mirrors the human trainer. Imitation learning, the process of training through demonstration rather than code, benefits immensely from physical similarity, as every gesture, movement, or manipulation becomes directly transferrable.
AEON is not designed to entertain. “Its use of wheels rather than legs is a deliberate choice based on engineering efficiency,” Robert continues. “It prioritises stability, speed and pivoting capability over aesthetic mimicry. The focus is on delivering business value by enabling robots to perform a wide variety of repetitive, high-precision tasks in environments where human labour is either unavailable or better allocated elsewhere.”
Physical AI meets spatial awareness
AEON’s capabilities emerge from the fusion of precision robotics, AI, and multimodal sensing. “Hexagon’s heritage in metrology and sensor fusion underpins AEON’s spatial intelligence, enabling it to understand and act within its environment in real time,” Robert adds. “It carries 22 sensors and 12 cameras, including infrared and AR systems for situational awareness and heat mapping. These are not merely navigation tools; they unlock critical use cases in inspection, reality capture, and asset monitoring.
“The robot’s design includes three onboard computers, one general-purpose unit and two AI engines, delivering edge compute power essential for real-time autonomy. By operating at the edge, AEON minimises latency, maintains mission continuity even in disconnected environments, and supports use cases in safety-critical and infrastructure-sensitive domains.”
Crucially, this level of autonomy enables AEON to manage complexity without central orchestration. Tasks such as adjusting behaviour based on proximity to people or sensing heat sources from machines are handled in situ, not by querying a remote server. This reduces risk, improves response speed, and makes the robot suitable for hazardous or regulated environments where real-time independence is crucial.
AEON’s dexterity is supported by bionic hands capable of handling a spectrum of materials, from delicate fasteners to bulky engine parts. Its modularity allows it to shift between use cases, such as sorting, manipulating, tending machines, and capturing digital twins, with minimal downtime. A battery-swapping system eliminates the need to interrupt operations for recharging, a critical innovation for factories and logistics hubs operating around the clock.
Deploying in the real world
The emphasis is on deployment, not demonstration. AEON is currently being piloted by Schaeffler and Pilatus across a range of real-world scenarios. At Pilatus’ Swiss facilities, the robot is being integrated into production lines to support automation in a high-cost labour market. Roman Emmenegger, Vice President of Manufacturing at Pilatus, believes AEON’s design “opens a multitude of opportunities to drive automation and digitisation in our daily operations” by delivering agility and versatility without the overheads of structural change.
At Schaeffler, the pilot programme explores how humanoid robots can support vertical integration and repetitive production tasks to enhance resilience and responsiveness in global manufacturing environments. Sebastian Jonas, Senior Vice President for Advanced Production Technology at Schaeffler, describes the pilot as “paving the way” for the adoption of disruptive automation technologies in pursuit of greater motion efficiency and competitiveness.
AEON’s use cases are already mapped out in four key areas: manipulation, machine tending, part inspection, and reality capture. Each represents a category of work where human expertise is increasingly difficult to recruit or retain. The pilots will not only refine AEON’s capabilities but also provide critical feedback loops to adapt the system for broader industrial adoption.
Rethinking the human-machine relationship
The implications of humanoid deployment in industry are not merely technical. They prompt a re-evaluation of how labour is distributed, how workplaces are designed, and how machine intelligence can augment, rather than replace, human effort. AEON is not designed to eliminate jobs but to address shortages and release human workers from dangerous, repetitive, or ergonomically taxing roles. Robert describes the robot as a step towards “building an autonomous future, one human way at a time.”
This framing matters. The development of physical AI must go hand-in-hand with social and economic transformation. The human-centric design of AEON is as much about adoption as it is about functionality. The closer robots can operate to human standards in terms of form and capability, the easier it becomes for industry to integrate them without disrupting workflows or retraining entire workforces.
Autonomy, in this context, is not a buzzword. It is an operational necessity. Machines that can sense, reason, and act independently will be the foundation of manufacturing’s next evolution. The cost of inaction is not just inefficiency but irrelevance in a labour-constrained global economy.
The next phase of industrial transformation
AEON does not arrive in isolation. Its development is supported by strategic partnerships with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and maxon, each contributing critical components such as compute acceleration, cloud-based training, and advanced actuators. The emphasis is not on building everything in-house but on assembling a robust ecosystem capable of accelerating humanoid adoption at scale.
The next six months will determine how AEON performs in varied industrial settings and whether the technology can deliver repeatable value. But the direction is clear. As manufacturers wrestle with complexity, uncertainty, and workforce disruption, solutions that combine AI, robotics, and physical awareness are shifting from experimental to essential.
Humanoids are no longer an idea waiting for justification. In AEON’s case, they are a response to measurable industrial pressures, engineered with purpose and shaped by the need for autonomy that industry can trust. The age of physical AI has arrived, and with it, a new vision of what industrial resilience looks like.
