Construction Autonomy Shines at CES 2026: Key Innovations Revealed

Blue collar autonomy, which includes construction, agriculture, mining, airport & warehouse logistics, garbage hauling, and critical infrastructure monitoring has made significant progress since CES 2025. Companies like Caterpillar, Doosan and Oshkosh displayed substantial progress and capabilities in construction autonomy at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. As discussed in prior articles, the motivation and business rationale for blue collar autonomy include: Addressing the gaps in skilled workforce availability that is willing to work in harsh and remote conditions Recruiting and retaining a tech savvy workforce that wants to work with complex robotic and AI equipped machinery, typically in more benign and local conditions Enhanced safety, lower accidents Higher capital utilization, and the use of sensors and maxhine learning to predict downtimes and proactive machine maintenance Continuous optimization of process flows based on data and experience-based learning Higher profitability and productivity for end users of this equipment Eliminating repetitive tasks for humans that lead to distraction, quality issues and safety incidents. Physical AI machines excel at this. They never get bored or distracted. As witnessed in CES 2026, there is a stark difference between companies working on autonomous vehicles and humanoid general purpose robots vs blue-collar autonomy companies. The former keep promising future roadmaps. The latter are showing impressive operational results now. These advances are typically unseen as opposed to autonomous cars which impact ordinary customer directly and feature heavily in popular media. It also helps that blue-collar operations typically occur in controlled or semi-controlled environments with zero or minimal pedestrians, and need lower levels of regulatory oversight. At CES 2026, a key focus of the Media Panel on The Future of Mobility Innovation (Figure 1) was vehicle autonomy and the emergence of Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs). One of the other points that was discussed was that although autonomous vehicles grab most of the public attention in physical AI and AoT™ (Autonomy of Things), the sector delivering immediate business value is blue-collar autonomy - construction, agriculture, mining, airport & warehouse logistics, garbage hauling and critical infrastructure monitoring. The panel was composed of Wendy Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, PCMag, Jerry Hirsch, Senior Editor, Automotive News, Edward Loh, Editorial Director, MotorTrend and yours’s truly (Sabbir Rangwala, Senior Contributor, Forbes). It was moderated by Grace Venes-Escaffi of the Consumer Technology Association (which organizes CES). MORE FOR YOU The rest of this article discusses specific examples and companies in the construction portion of blue-collar autonomy. Subsequent articles will discuss progress in agricultural and robotic applications in industrial autonomy. Caterpillar - We build a better, more sustainable world A leader in the construction and supply of construction and mining equipment for over a century, today it is a $300B corporation serving 190 countries (essentially every country on Earth), $65B in annual revenues and 113,00 employees. The company traces its name to the installation of tracks (over the wheels) to enable traction in 1905. The motion resembled the crawling of a big Caterpillar. In terms of autonomy, the company has invested in various pieces of technology blocks for the past 30 years - sensors, perception, path planning, compute and AI. At CES 2026, these capabilities were on full display (Figure 1). Apart from the significant physical AI accomplishments, a new capability, the CAT AI Assistant was demonstrated at CES. Developed under the leadership of Ogi Redzic, Caterpillar Chief Digital Officer, CAT Assistant is an AI agent that sits on top of a foundational LLM (Large Language Model) and encodes a century worth of operational knowledge and product design, enabling customers to engage with Caterpillar’s diverse equipment and portfolio of digital applications. This enables them to buy, maintain, manage and operate their equipment safely and efficiently— no matter where they are. An easy-to-operate HMI (Human Machine Interface) allows operators, dealers and customers to select, operate, maintain and troubleshoot equipment and operations, either in-cab and in-field, off-cab and in-field or remotely. One of the operational challenges the CAT Assistant addresses is mentoring and training of freshly or minimally trained operators, safely and frictionlessly. It can also help cross-train operators on different pieces of equipment, as needed in the operation. According to Ogi Redzic, Caterpillar Chief Digital Officer, “Cat AI Assistant is a major leap forward in how Caterpillar supports customer success through best-in-class digital solutions, whether they’re working from corporate headquarters or at a remote jobsite.” Oshkosh - Working for the World More than a century old, Oshkosh is a publicly listed, global corporation ($10B valuation, $10B/year revenues) that serves diverse industrial applications ranging from autonomous truck and airport logistics to specialized construction equipment, garbage hauling and electrified vehicles. These applications are addressed through 12 brands, with a theme being to develop "moments of autonomy" to assist humans operating in harsh and dangerous conditions. Jay Iyengar is the company CTO and responsible for technology strategy and strategic sourcing. According to her, “”Oshkosh equipment is typically the first to enter a construction site and the last to leave. We are bullish on the “Jobsite of the Future, surgically inserting autonomy to augment human skills in complex and cognitively difficult tasks". An example illustrating the "moments of autonomy" theme is shown in Figure 2. A JLG (one of the Oshkosh brands) scissor lift performs construction operations at a height, ensuring that a human is out of the loop of a potentially dangerous operation. Instead of a bucket (for a human operator), it integrates an end effector and sensor stack, with remote edge computing to provide precision assembly, and perform operations like welding, lifting, bolting, etc. At its CES Booth, Oshkosh displayed cooperative autonomy between multiple coordinated JLG boom lifts and a scissor lift with a tooled end effector, lifting and fixing a heavy beam at a height. The autonomy requires precise coordinated movements and communications between the machines (Figure 3). Given Oshkosh’s diverse range of products, it is critical that technology blocks developed for one application are used across its product lines. According to Ms. Iyengar, “We want to develop scalable technology that’s applicable across all our product families, because it’s always easy to do a one-off. It’s a lot harder to do something at scale.” One example of leveraging cross product capability is Oshkosh’s airport logistics operations (Oshkosh AeroTech) which perform autonomous jetway positioning once a plane lands, followed by autonomous baggage load and unload operations. The key for airlines like Delta is rapid and safe aircraft turnaround on a 24 x 7 x365 timeframe. Oshkosh autonomy enables this (Figure 4) through its “Airport of the Future” capabilities. AIM - Autonomous Earthmoving @Scale Founded in 2021 by ex-Google and Space X employees in Seattle, it has 50 people today, whose passion is to move and level soil and minerals - for the construction, mining, disaster management and defense sectors. It recently raised $50 million with investments from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Human Capital, Ironspring Ventures, Mantis, DCVC, and Elad Gil. The key product is the AIM Kit (Figure 5): It consists of: Edge AI computation that runs onboard the machine to ensure non-stop operation, with or without connectivity. Rugged hardware, designed for extreme vibration, dust, heat, cold, and continuous abuse in field conditions. This includes onboard sensors that ensure safety, localization, 360° awareness (LiDAR), multiple cameras (3-4 depending on application), and mapping from all angles, even without GPS or internet connectivity. Localization in the absence of GPS is achieved with LiDAR and camera data. One of the challenges with this is that the terrain is constantly changing as operations proceed, something that AIM has developed solutions for (dynamic and real-time, adaptive localization). Adam Sadilek (ex Google-X) is the CEO and he is passionate about earth and soil - he believes this is the true root of sustenance for humanity from agriculture, minerals, construction and technology. Per Mr. Sadilek, “everything that we build, that we rely on day to day, starts with dirt. From the device you are reading this on now to the buildings, roads, and machines we use every day, all of it is either mined or grown, and our ability to move earth is key to all of that”. The first step in the journey is to install and calibrate the hardware on customer equipment (which can be done on any brand). Once done, the next step is to survey and map the site and identify opportunities for increased safety and efficiency. Processes are established, operators are trained and hardware-software integration with the defined processes and efficiency parameters are tested. Once done, the final step is to execute the transition to autonomy. At this point, the customer is able to monitor operations and key metrics remotely via a tablet interface (Figure 7): In three years of operation, AIM has made significant advances in terms of customer traction and revenues (per Mr. Sadilek, the company is currently breakeven, which implies annual revenues of ~$20M). AIM operates a multi-step revenue model designed to start with installation and site analytics, and expands into full autonomy and maximum value creation for AIM’s customers. Annual recurring fees are also invoiced as safety, autonomy and productivity milestones are met. Pronto.ai - Autonomous Haulage Simplified San Francisco based Pronto.ai was founded 8 years ago to leverage learnings from the AV (Autonomous Vehicle) experience to off-road environments like quarrying and mining. Anthony Levandowski, a pioneer in the AV revolution (ex-Waymo, Otto and Uber Freight), is the CEO. His pivot away from AVs to off-road autonomy is driven by the more immediate business prospects in this sector, as well as significantly lower capital, R&D investments and regulatory requirements. A previous article had discussed Pronto’s collaboration with Heidelberg Materials, the world’s largest producer of construction aggregates, for automating its Texas quarry in concert with Komatsu, North America, using a fleet of Komatsu HD605-8 haul trucks integrated with Komatsu’s Smart Quarry platform and Pronto’s AHS (Autonomous Hauling System). Following a successful pilot project at its Bridgeport site, Heidelberg Materials has equipped a mixed fleet of Caterpillar and Komatsu haul trucks with Pronto’s Autonomous Haulage System (AHS), see Figure 6. At the heel of CES 2026, Pronto announced a significant milestone - Heidelberg Materials has now autonomously hauled over two million tons of limestone at its Lake Bridgeport quarry in Texas. This milestone represents a record for the aggregates industry (8000 tons and 500 truck rolls/day from a single facility). The fleet included Caterpillar 775G rigid frame trucks alongside Komatsu HD605-8 and next-generation Komatsu HD605-10 trucks (equipped with Pronto’s AHS system). Per Mr. Levandowski: “True scalability in the aggregates industry requires the ability to automate the iron you already own. By successfully running a mixed fleet of Cat and Komatsu trucks on Pronto AHS, we have proven that autonomy is no longer a ‘one-brand’ luxury”.