As a world labor scarcity leaves 50 million positions unfilled throughout industries like manufacturing and logistics, Hexagon — a world chief in measurement applied sciences — is creating humanoid robots that may lend a serving to hand.
Industrial sectors rely on expert staff to carry out quite a lot of error-prone duties, together with working high-precision scanners for actuality seize — the method of capturing digital knowledge to duplicate the actual world in simulation.
On the Hexagon LIVE World convention, Hexagon’s robotics division immediately unveiled AEON — a brand new humanoid robotic inbuilt collaboration with NVIDIA that’s engineered to carry out a variety of commercial functions, from manipulation and asset inspection to actuality seize and operator assist. Hexagon plans to deploy AEON throughout automotive, transportation, aerospace, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics.
Future use circumstances for AEON embody:
- Actuality seize, which includes computerized planning after which scanning of belongings, industrial areas and environments to generate 3D fashions. The captured knowledge is then used for superior visualization and collaboration within the Hexagon Digital Actuality (HxDR) platform powering Hexagon Actuality Cloud Studio (RCS).
- Manipulation duties, corresponding to sorting and shifting elements in varied industrial and manufacturing settings.
- Half inspection, which incorporates checking elements for defects or guaranteeing adherence to specs.
- Industrial operations, together with extremely dexterous technical duties like equipment operations, teleoperation and scanning elements utilizing high-end scanners.
“The age of general-purpose robotics has arrived, on account of technological advances in simulation and bodily AI,” mentioned Deepu Talla, vp of robotics and edge AI at NVIDIA. “Hexagon’s new AEON humanoid embodies the mixing of NVIDIA’s three-computer robotics platform and is making a major leap ahead in addressing industry-critical challenges.”
Utilizing NVIDIA’s Three Computer systems to Develop AEON
To construct AEON, Hexagon used NVIDIA’s three computer systems for creating and deploying bodily AI programs. They embody AI supercomputers to coach and fine-tune highly effective basis fashions; the NVIDIA Omniverse platform, operating on NVIDIA OVX servers, for testing and optimizing these fashions in simulation environments utilizing actual and bodily primarily based artificial knowledge; and NVIDIA IGX Thor robotic computer systems to run the fashions.
Hexagon is exploring utilizing NVIDIA accelerated computing to post-train the NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1.5 open basis mannequin to enhance robotic reasoning and insurance policies, and tapping Isaac GR00T-Mimic to generate huge quantities of artificial movement knowledge from just a few human demonstrations.
AEON learns lots of its abilities by means of simulations powered by the NVIDIA Isaac platform. Hexagon makes use of NVIDIA Isaac Sim, a reference robotic simulation utility constructed on Omniverse, to simulate complicated robotic actions like navigation, locomotion and manipulation. These abilities are then refined utilizing reinforcement studying in NVIDIA Isaac Lab, an open-source framework for robotic studying.
This simulation-first strategy enabled Hexagon to fast-track its robotic growth, permitting AEON to grasp core locomotion abilities in simply 2-3 weeks — fairly than 5-6 months — earlier than real-world deployment.
As well as, AEON faucets into NVIDIA Jetson Orin onboard computer systems to autonomously transfer, navigate and carry out its duties in actual time, enhancing its velocity and accuracy whereas working in complicated and dynamic environments. Hexagon can be planning to improve AEON with NVIDIA IGX Thor to allow purposeful security for collaborative operation.
“Our objective with AEON was to design an clever, autonomous humanoid that addresses the real-world challenges industrial leaders have shared with us over the previous months,” mentioned Arnaud Robert, president of Hexagon’s robotics division. “By leveraging NVIDIA’s full-stack robotics and simulation platforms, we have been in a position to ship a best-in-class humanoid that mixes superior mechatronics, multimodal sensor fusion and real-time AI.”
Information Involves Life By means of Actuality Seize and Omniverse Integration
AEON will probably be piloted in factories and warehouses to scan the whole lot from small precision elements and automotive parts to giant meeting traces and storage areas.
Captured knowledge involves life in RCS, a platform that enables customers to collaborate, visualize and share reality-capture knowledge by tapping into HxDR and NVIDIA Omniverse operating within the cloud. This removes the constraint of native infrastructure.
“Digital twins supply clear benefits, however adoption has been difficult in a number of industries,” mentioned Lucas Heinzle, vp of analysis and growth at Hexagon’s robotics division. “AEON’s refined sensor suite allows the mixing of actuality knowledge seize with NVIDIA Omniverse, streamlining workflows for our clients and shifting us nearer to creating digital twins a mainstream device for collaboration and innovation.”
AEON’s Subsequent Steps
By adopting the OpenUSD framework and creating on Omniverse, Hexagon can generate high-fidelity digital twins from scanned knowledge — establishing a knowledge flywheel to repeatedly prepare AEON.
This newest work with Hexagon helps form the way forward for bodily AI — delivering scalable, environment friendly options to deal with the challenges confronted by industries that rely on capturing real-world knowledge.
Watch the Hexagon LIVE keynote, discover displays and learn extra about AEON.
All imagery courtesy of Hexagon.
