Robotics companies Schaeffler and Hexagon join forces

Strategic partnerships in Europe

The German company Schaeffler AG announced an agreement to integrate at least 1,000 Aeon humanoid robots in its global factories until 2032 in partnership with the Swiss Hexagon Robotics. It is not an experiment, it is an industrial commitment, but what makes this move even more strategic is not just the number of robots, it is the business model.

Schaeffler AG will not only be a user of these machines, it will also be a supplier of the critical components that make these robots move. In other words, she is helping to build the robots that she herself will use. This type of integration creates something powerful. The company begins to learn with the actual operation within its own factories and at the same time improves the components it sells to the global market.

It is a closed cycle of evolution and at the center of everything are the actuators, the muscles of the robots. Schaeffler AG will provide high-precision systems, including stress wave gears and planetary actuators designed to offer fine control, fast response and safety in interaction with humans. It may sound technical, but it defines everything, without precise motion control, a human does not function in a real environment.

In 2025, AEON robots had already been used in real industrial environments, not only for simple tasks, but to operate multiple machines, load, unload and inspect parts autonomously, now the project leaves the validation phase and enters the scale phase and does not end there, the company also maintains agreements with other robotics companies such as neura robotics and strategic alliances with startups in the sector, that is, it is not betting on a single type of robot, it is betting on the future of robotics in its set, be it bipedal, on wheels or modular, wants to be in all of them.

And there is a factor that clearly explains this decision, the cost; Today the work of a humanoid robot is estimated between $10 and $5 per hour, in many scenarios this is already competitive with human work, mainly in repetitive, dangerous or difficult to hire tasks. The central sentence of this story may be inevitable, but there is a huge difference between investing in robots and putting them to work in place of a human.