Schaeffler trains Hexagon's AEON humanoid robots ahead of 1,000-unit factory rollout

Hexagon Robotics and Schaeffler have moved to the next phase of their partnership. AEON, Hexagon Robotics' multipurpose humanoid, has entered Schaeffler's Humanoid Gym in Germany, a dedicated facility where the company trains, tests and validates humanoid robots before they reach the factory floor. The work backs Schaeffler's plan to deploy at least 1,000 AEON units across its global manufacturing network over the next seven years.

The two companies call their approach a Train-Validate-Deploy model. AEON learns tasks through imitation learning and repeated execution, using applications drawn directly from Schaeffler's factories. Engineers then refine and validate the robot's policies before it moves into production, a step meant to catch failures before they reach a live line.

Engineers running pilot deployments will care about that validation step specifically. Humanoid robots have struggled to move from demo to reliable, repeated production use, and a dedicated gym is Hexagon Robotics' answer to that gap. "The real value creation comes when humanoids perform multiple tasks reliably and at a high-performance standard in production," said Arnaud Robert, president of Hexagon Robotics. "Schaeffler's Humanoid Gym gives us an environment where AEON can meet the performance and reliability standards across real use cases and therefore allow us to scale our manufacturing deployments."

Dr. Jochen Schröder, chief operating officer at Schaeffler, described the program in operational terms: "With AEON being trained in our Humanoid Gym, we are taking the next step in turning humanoid robotics into an industrial reality." The gym also trains Schaeffler staff to operate, train and integrate humanoids before the robots spread more broadly across the company's plants. The companies expect the current cycle to support AEON deployments across multiple manufacturing applications at Schaeffler within six months.

The news follows a separate milestone in Hexagon Robotics' humanoid push: AEON began performing production tasks at BMW Group's Leipzig plant in June, while simultaneously training for future applications there, evidence that the company is running validation and live deployment in parallel rather than sequentially. Schaeffler is also supplying Hexagon Robotics with its own high-precision actuators, a detail that ties the two companies' hardware roadmaps together beyond this training program.