Robots That Build the World

Few companies are trying anything as ambitious as San Francisco startup Built Robotics. It sells autonomous technology for bulldozers and other heavy equipment. The tech can enable a Caterpillar tractor, among others, to move dirt and lift pallets of wood—all without anyone in the cab.

The “brains”—a combination of sensors, intelligence, and cameras—are affixed atop the vehicle’s cab inside what looks like a car luggage carrier. Software engineers must work with on-site contractors, who pay a monthly fee for the technology, to program the autonomous guidance system for specific jobs.

With the construction industry facing a global labor shortage, Built’s aim is to allow one equipment operator to oversee a fleet of vehicles working autonomously in parallel, hopping in the cab only for tasks the machine can’t handle.

Rather than building its own vehicles, Built focuses on converting the popular construction equipment that’s already out there. They sell a kit that straps to the top of things like excavators, bulldozers and skid steers, taking tech like lidar, GPS and Wi-Fi and meshing them into the machine’s innards to give it autonomous smarts. They sell the conversion boxes to other companies, help them get installed, then charge a usage fee whenever the machines are in autonomous mode.

Ready-Campbell, whose dad was a general contractor, is getting in on the action and taking advantage of the dramatic advances in automation to go after construction. For the past two years, he’s been developing software and sensors that can turn off-the-shelf excavators into robots that can dig holes with precision for hours without a break.

From a small dirt field in a sparsely populated part of San Francisco, Ready-Campbell’s 10-person start-up, Built Robotics, has been stealthily operating a retrofitted skid steer, directing it via a computer program to move around dirt.

Today, there are human supervisors within eyesight of the equipment, Ready-Campbell said. However, the goal is for contractors to monitor the Built Robotics machines from as far as a mile away, he said.

Within a year, Built Robotics-equipped machines could be available to contractors working on a small project who might need a machine for just a day.

Robotic earth movers are starting to break ground.

A startup called Built Robotics, founded by an ex-Google engineer and currently backed by $15 million of venture capital, has announced that it’s currently building a robotic tractor that digs and moves earth. Wired explains that the vehicle uses special heavy-duty, vibration-proof lidar sensors and GPS to help it navigate construction yards. A stack of computers in a roof-mounted box allow it to make sense of what it sees, so that it can dig up a site according to a set of coordinates from building plans

The International Union of Operating Engineers has plenty of big toys at its training center in Crosby, Texas, but one that began rolling across the 265-acre campus last week is an oddity…

The IUOE’s new robotic excavator is the result of an unusual partnership with Built Robotics, a San Francisco startup that sells a box that can enable a backhoe or bulldozer to pilot itself for some tasks. It contains a high-powered computer, motion and angle sensors, and a laser scanner called a lidar commonly used in self-driving cars.

Although Built’s product is designed to remove workers from the cab of construction equipment, IUOE’s director of construction training, Chris Treml, says the union wants to train its members to work with the technology. “Operating engineers are always on the cutting edge of technology,” he says.