Construction Technology
Bedrock Robotics Moves Earth With Autonomous Excavators
Bedrock’s autonomous operation technology uses LiDAR and GPS for accurate positioning.
Bedrock Robotics, in partnership with Sundt Construction, is automating excavators for heavy civil site preparation for a 130-acre manufacturing facility project in the Southwest supporting domestic energy production, and is already showing results in productivity and coordination.
Bedrock’s autonomous systems have moved more than 65,000 cu yd of earth and rock by loading human-operated articulated dump trucks in the same workflow as traditional operations, with trucks positioning to be loaded by an excavator taking scoops from a stripped pile. The success of the integration demonstrates commercial viability for autonomous construction, the tech firm says. The technology is now installed across multiple excavator models ranging from 20 to 80 tons at the project site, adapting its systems from compact units to large-scale earthmovers.
“They’re a tool in a much larger toolbox that we have on this,” says Dan Green, Sundt senior project manager, noting plans to move about 700,000 cu yd of rock and earth on the project. “That’s the scale of what we’re moving,” he said. Bedrock excavators “are about 10% of our utilization out there.”
Bedrock, a San Francisco-based autonomous equipment startup, counts Austin Bridge & Road, Maverick Constructors and Haydon Cos. along with Champion Site Prep, Zachry Construction, Capitol Aggregates and Sundt as partners testing its add-on kits for autonomous equipment.
Large, remote jobsites needing skilled operators where these workers are not readily available comes at a premium cost and has emerged as a fertile testbed for autonomous equipment. Bechtel has used Built Robotics excavators for trenching on solar projects in Texas, and has used autonomous pile-drivers on other projects. Autonomous skid steers from Moog were used to deliver solar panels, just-in-time for installation on a western New York solar project. Green says adding artificial intelligence and machine learning to the process has helped Sundt’s operators bring their autonomous co-workers along faster.
“We’ve taken very experienced operators and they’re teaching how a human does that task by using multiple operators,” Green explains. “It’s getting to feel the difference between them, because every operator is different in how they do [their job].” Using these autonomous systems efficiency, “you’re kind of taking that consolidated knowledge of multiple operators and turning it into one operator, and that’s very powerful,” he adds.
A Caterpillar excavator, with Bedrock Robotics’ technology, loads a Deere dump truck.
Photo courtesy of Bedrock Robotics
Solving Challenges
Bedrock was founded by engineers and executives from commercial autonomous vehicle startup Waymo. CEO and co-founder Boris Sofman said developing Bedrock’s technology on active jobsites with real projects and contractors allows the company to quickly scale up the same way Waymo did, solving wayfinding, topography and other challenges that map-based navigation initially struggled to get past.
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“We’ve been really happy with how much a pretty sizable group, a part of the industry is embracing the possibility of this,” Sofman says.
He adds that facing challenges—including workforce availability—that limit project capacity for contractors while ensuring that Bedrock uses an intuitive approach that is non-disruptive to partners and customers has enabled the startup to grow quickly.
“Just the availability of labor is a huge pain point, so a lot of jobs just don’t get done,” Sofman says, noting “an expansionary impact on [construction].”
