Last year, Boris Sofman left Waymo, a former star engineer at Waymo and dedicated to truck automation. He teamed up with former Waymo colleagues Ajay Gummalla and Kevin Peterson, as well as engineer Tom Eliaz to found Bedrock Robotics. They start with excavators, which are widely used in heavy excavation operations. The San Francisco-based startup is not planning to design its own line of construction machinery, but plans to add cameras, lidar, computers and AI software to existing equipment to enable it to work around the clock, including when human workers need to take frequent breaks due to high temperatures.

Bedrock also invited former Uber Freight executive vice president Laurent Hautefeuille as chief operating officer and recently announced a $80 million new financing, with commercial operations scheduled to begin in 2026.

"This is another application scenario in the transportation field, and it is at the forefront of technological change."

In an interview with Forbes, Sofman said Waymo's success in self-driving taxis shows that "the technology is mature and we are witnessing it success in one of the world's most difficult application scenarios. This is the basis for driving change. When we look at the widespread use of these dedicated heavy machinery, it is another area where the technology wave is about to usher in the transportation field."

This is a challenging time for the vast American construction industry. Demand for housing, data centers and factories surges, but the Trump administration’s tariff policies and tough immigration restrictions are pushing up material costs and exacerbating an already tight shortage of skilled workers.

“It’s a compelling situation: the macroeconomic momentum is strong and the United States needs to reindustrialize,” Soffman said. “At the same time, the labor market, even more severe than the truck industry, is moving in the opposite direction.”

He has not announced his revenue target yet, but the market potential is huge. According to IBISWorld's report, U.S. excavator contract revenue is expected to reach $145 billion this year, a year-on-year increase of 2.5%. Bedrock has not announced its valuation, but may continue to raise funds in the next year.

Bedrock currently has started testing automatic excavator at test sites in Arizona, Texas and Arkansas, and plans to expand testing to customer sites next month. If all goes well, CEO Soffman said, "We expect to achieve the first unmanned aircraft by 2026."

“Boris formed an extraordinary founding team, many of whom I had the honor of working with,” said John Krafcik, former Waymo CEO, who has invested undisclosed amounts in the startup. “This is a team that stands out in terms of technical depth, resilience and vision, with the ability to turn automated construction machinery into reality.”

Unlike Waymo or autonomous truck development company Aurora, Bedrock has lower capital demand because it does not require manufacturing or buying vehicles or building large factories. Working on private commercial construction sites also means Bedrock does not have to face the regulatory challenges faced by operating self-driving taxis and self-driving semi-trucks on public roads. Speed is not a problem either, because the pace of the construction site is consistent with that of human operations. Soffman estimates that the overall cost of the project may be reduced by at least 20%, but more importantly, the project will be completed faster than relying on manual operations alone.

Labor shortage

According to the Associated Builders and Contractors, about 500,000 people exit the labor market every year due to retirement or age reasons, and there are serious shortages of workers who can replace them. Meanwhile, the Trump administration imposed a 25% tariff on imported steel and aluminum, and his threat to impose a 35% tariff on Canadian timber, is pushing up construction costs across the board.

"We are not going to move from being operated to being operated immediately. I don't think anyone thinks this is what the reality is going to happen."

Although the full impact of current immigration restrictions is unclear, according to U.S. census data, 34% of workers in the construction industry were foreign-born in 2023, almost twice the percentage of 18% in all industries. But Ken Simonson, chief economist at the Associated General Contractors of America, pointed out that the proportion of immigrant workers is relatively low for skilled jobs that require certification, such as excavator operators.

Given the labor shortage, this technology is unlikely to lead to a reduction in jobs, and instead allows labor teams to complete their jobs more efficiently. Eric Cylwik, innovation director at Sundt Construction, said the company, along with Texas-based Zachry Construction and Champion Site Prep, is assisting Bedrock in developing and testing its technology.

"We're not going to move from being operated to being operated immediately. I don't think anyone thinks this is what reality will happen," he said. Instead, Bedrock's technology will allow Sundt and its competitors to perform more nighttime operations, with robotic excavators able to complete monotonous and repetitive site preparation tasks such as filling trucks with dirt and allowing human workers to focus on pipeline installations. Additionally, the technology can help remote construction sites, “We have difficulty getting enough operators to operate deployed equipment,” Cylwik said.

Bedrock has not yet disclosed how much it will cost to modify an excavator that costs $500,000, but its ability to automate existing equipment is very attractive to companies like Sundt. “The good thing is that it works for our entire fleet and the cost is only a small part of the purchase of a brand new excavator,” Cylwik said.

Lidar can instantly create three-dimensional images at high speeds, which is the key to achieving safe road driving. On construction sites, it can map ground conditions in detail and accurately measure the amount of earth excavated by excavator buckets, which is crucial information for contractors.

"In some projects we have to ask registered land surveyors to confirm the amount of earthwork moved for each construction to settle. With such a system, we can know exactly how much earthwork moved per equipment every day, which directly affects Sundt's collection speed. This rapid data analysis capability has a profound impact on the construction industry."

Bedrock's pace of advancement from concept to testing to planning commercialization has attracted Eclipse VCs, which dominated its May 2024 seed round. The current A round of financing is led by 8VC. Other investors include Two Sigma Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Nvidia's NVentures, Crossbeam Venture Partners, Raine Group, Tishman Speyer, Atreides Management, Al Rajhi Partners and Sambra Ventures.

"It's a cyclone," said Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner at Eclipse. "It was founded in May 2024 and has been autonomously running at the test site by early November. Now they have fully automated mining with completely unmanned operations at the test site and are planning to conduct testing on the customer site next month."

"We're not competing with Caterpillar to build machines. We're making machines smarter."

They also targeted a field where there was little competition. Leading equipment manufacturers such as Caterpillar and John Deere are moving towards automation, launching self-driving trucks and tractors for mining, but are not yet focused on equipment such as excavators, loaders and dump trucks required for commercial buildings. Before Bedrock, “there was never an opportunity to test automated construction equipment.”

When asked why Caterpillar and Deere did not develop competitive automation solutions for the construction industry, Soffman gave an example: "It's like asking why BMW didn't create Waymo. The mechanical structures they designed were excellent. It's a miracle that these machines can still run reliably and efficiently in such harsh environments, but they lack the technical genes needed to build machine learning teams."

He hopes that Bedrock will work with these companies in the future.

"We're not competing with Caterpillar to build machines. We're making machines smarter," he said. “This will be a very complementary part of the entire ecosystem, with Caterpillar and Deere equipment becoming smarter, general contractors and subcontractors getting more work more efficiently, with higher margins, and society as a whole benefit from more engineering completion and more affordable prices.”

More from Forbes

Forbes, the AI founder became a billionaire by creating ChatGPT for doctors
Author: Amy Feldman
Forbes enters Waymo factory and looks forward to the future of autonomous taxis
Author: Alan Ohnsman
Forbes Forget about Tesla, Amazon's Zoox is Waymo's biggest competitor in self-driving taxi
Author: Alan Ohnsman

The above is the detailed content of Waymo Vets Are Automating Construction Sites With Self-Driving Dirt Diggers. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!