California-based Teleo, a provider of retrofit solutions for heavy construction equipment that enable supervised autonomy, has announced deals with the John Aarts Group, Teichert and Tomahawk Construction for remote-operated wheel loaders, bulldozers and dump trucks, respectively.
Construction and mining companies are struggling to find workers, leading to rising costs and delays with ongoing projects, reports the Associated General Contractors of America organization. To address this, Teleo has developed an incremental approach to autonomy with its system, Teleo Supervised Autonomy.
The system enables the remote and semi-autonomous operations of all makes and models of heavy construction equipment. One advantage of this is that a single operator can control an array of machines from a command center. Supervised Autonomy enables operators to perform complicated tasks that fully autonomous technology is currently unable to carry out. The solution can deliver increased site productivity and excellent operational visibility.
“The construction industry is experiencing a growing skilled labor shortage,” said Vinay Shet, co-founder and CEO, Teleo. “We founded Teleo to help contractors supercharge their operators’ efforts by turning their equipment into semi-autonomous machines. By moving the operator out of the cab of the machine and into a command center, we’re also making the operator’s role safer, comfortable and more accessible.”
Tomahawk, a Florida-based excavation and site development company, has partnered with Teleo to deploy the technology on 12 articulated dump trucks for land development and moving dirt. Beginning in summer 2023, Tomahawk will begin remote operations, before advancing to semi-autonomous operations later this year. The technology is expected to help operations run more efficiently while Tomahawk experiences a labor shortage.
“We have had two trucks sitting around for 10 months without operators in them,” said Scott Lyons, managing member, Tomahawk Construction. “With Teleo, more people will be attracted to this job because they can run trucks from our office and save hours of drive time to and from jobsites. Due to the current labor market, we know going forward we need to do more with less. I believe the Teleo system is the vehicle to make that happen.”