Swiss aircraft manufacturer testing a humanoid robot inspector on its PC-24 assembly line
Inspection by robot
At Pilatus Aircraft's factory in Stans, Switzerland, a humanoid robot has a job no machine has done there before: walk the production floor, locate the PC-24 fuselage sidewall, and verify that workers fitted the correct components in the correct positions.
I'm guessing it'll do a better job than me, given that I know just about nothing about aircraft manufacturing.
The robot is AEON, built by Hexagon, a Swedish industrial measurement company. Pilatus announced the test on November 5, making it one of the first aviation manufacturers to deploy a humanoid robot for active quality inspection on a final assembly line.
(We recently interviewed the president of Hexagon Robotics, Arnaud Robert, for the Humanoid (almost) Daily podcast. Check out our conversation here.)
What AEON does at the factory
AEON stands 165 cm tall, weighs 60 kg, and moves on a hybrid system: legs that end in wheels, letting it roll along flat surfaces and climb over obstacles when needed. It carries 12 cameras and 22 sensors, including a 360-degree panoramic array and autofocus inspection cameras. It runs on Nvidia Jetson Orin hardware, processing motion planning and spatial reasoning onboard.
At Pilatus, the robot's initial task is to navigate the production hangar, find specific assembly points on the PC-24 business jet, and check that parts are correctly placed and fitted. It makes digital records of completed work. Eventually the plan is to run nighttime inspections, reviewing what day-shift crews completed after they go home.
Kilian Läubli, a project manager at Pilatus, says the goal is to have robots handle highly repetitive, unattractive, or physically demanding tasks, specifically the jobs where Pilatus struggles to find workers.
In other words, the goal is not to cut headcount.
But it's going to take some training before it does a lot of useful work:
"The system still needs a lot of work before it's ready for use in the future," says Benjamin Mettler, head of structure assembly at Pilatus/
Navigation in large production hangars is genuinely hard. The robot needs to independently identify where specific assemblies are located in a dynamic environment while dodging any people or equipment on the shop floor.
Who makes AEON
Hexagon is not a startup.
It is a 28.5 billion euro market cap industrial technology company listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, best known for precision measurement equipment. The fact that Hexagon already supplied measurement systems to Pilatus explains how this partnership started.
Hexagon launched AEON at its Stockholm conference in June 2025. The design reflects Hexagon's measurement background: 34 degrees of freedom, high-precision servo actuators, 22 sensors chosen specifically for quality verification work. The wheel-and-leg hybrid is pragmatic for factory floors that are mostly flat but have occasional steps or obstacles to navigate.
AEON is not exclusive to Pilatus.
BMW Group's Leipzig plant has had AEON doing high-voltage battery assembly work since June 2026. Schaeffler, the automotive supplier, has committed to deploying at least 1,000 AEON units across its global factory network by 2032.
The idea is that Hexagon is building a real industrial customer base, not just doing pilots.
Why aviation inspection matters
Aviation has been slow to adopt humanoid robots, for good reasons. The industry runs on certifications, traceability, and documentation, for obvious reasons: safety is absolutely paramount here.
A robot making digital inspection records adds traceability, which is good. But a robot missing a defect creates liability ... not so good.
Pilatus is a small-volume manufacturer, building a few hundred aircraft per year, which makes it a sensible testbed. The stakes are real but not at mass-production scale. If AEON can demonstrate reliable inspection on PC-24 assembly work, the argument for deploying it in higher-volume aviation manufacturing gets significantly stronger.
The night inspection use case is pretty interesting.
Factories don't typically run inspection teams around the clock, but defects don't wait for the morning. A robot that walks the floor overnight, checking and documenting what day-shift workers completed, could reasonably fill a gap that has not had a good answer before, covering the hours when no inspector is there.
Sources
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I tell stories with data and build startups. I've raised angel and VC funds, led software companies and startups, and chronicled the rise of the mobile economy. Currently I write for Forbes, host several podcasts, and am starting up HumanoidMegaHub. I was TUNE's mobile economist and Singular's VP of Insights, built the research team at VentureBeat, and managed teams creating software for partners like Intel and Disney. In past lives I built websites, e-learning platforms, and mobile apps, and, a long time ago, was named to Folio's top 100 of the media industry's "most innovative entrepreneurs and market shaker-uppers.”