Teleo, a company building autonomous technology for heavy construction equipment, announces at UP.Partners’ UP.Summit it is expanding its strategic focus to deploy autonomous heavy machinery–such as wheel loaders, terminal tractors, excavators, and more–into new industries beyond construction. The company also announces it has secured orders for 34 machines and has secured nine new customer deals in the pulp and paper; logging; port logistics; munition clearing; and agriculture industries. Teleo is also targeting expansion into other industries such as airports; waste and recycling; logistics; warehousing; and more. Additional orders have been placed that expand Teleo’s presence in the snow removal and construction industries, including the company’s entry into the Australian market.
Teleo announces it is expanding its strategic focus to deploy autonomous heavy machinery–such as wheel loaders, terminal tractors, excavators, and more–into new industries beyond construction.
Teleo converts any make, model, and vintage of heavy equipment, such as bulldozers, wheel loaders, articulated dump trucks and more, into autonomous robots. Teleo’s Supervised Autonomy keeps human operators involved, enabling one human to oversee multiple autonomous machines at once. The human operator acts as a supervisor with the ability to step in remotely to control the machine if needed. Teleo is moving the operator out of the cab of the machine and away from the harsh job site environment, and into a remote central command center, making the operator’s role safer, comfortable, and more accessible. Teleo’s technology helps address the growing labor shortage that is currently plaguing many industries.
“From day one, we have been obsessed with building a platform—both hardware and software—that is universally applicable to any make and model of heavy machinery and use case, opening doors to new industries,” said Vinay Shet, Co-founder and CEO, Teleo. “While construction remains a core industry for us, it’s evident that our technology offers significant value across a broader range of sectors. Our machine-agnostic and industry-agnostic approach ensures quick and easy deployment, allowing us to launch at diverse job sites, from remote and bustling to large and small, and from indoor to outdoor environments.”
The diverse range of customers representing new industries for Teleo include the following and more:
Pulp and Paper
U.S.-based RYAM is a global leader in paper milling. The company has placed orders to outfit three Caterpillar wheel loaders of diverse vintage, a 988K, a 980M, and a 988H, with Teleo Supervised Autonomy. This fall, RYAM will deploy the Teleo-equipped machines to haul bark and wood chips 24/7 at its pulp and paper mill in Fernandina Beach, Florida.
“Teleo’s incremental approach to autonomy enables us to integrate technology that improves our productivity and run our around-the-clock operations more efficiently,” said Daniel Porter, Senior Manager of Process Automation, RYAM. “The central command center also provides a more accessible and safer environment for our operators, who can oversee multiple machines from the comfort of an office.”
Logging
Finland-based Fin-Terpuu Oy, one of Europe’s largest logging companies, has deployed Teleo’s Supervised Autonomy on a Volvo L350F wheel loader for operations. This is the world’s first logging yard with autonomous operations. The company is conducting autonomous tramming, or hauling of materials from one point to another, of logs from their arrival point to a processing yard. Pick-up and drop-off activities are remote operated.
Fin-Terpuu’s active logging sites are complex and harsh environments, with around-the-clock operations happening in snow and cold weather, and often complete darkness as the Finland site experiences three months with no sunlight. The company chose Teleo’s solution as a way to overcome an ongoing labor shortage and to improve overall operational safety.
Snow Removal
Following Teleo’s successful 2024 entry into the snow removal industry, the company has expanded its work in snow removal with an order from Alff Construction in Bentonville, Arkansas. Alff has outfitted a John Deere 333G compact track loader with Teleo Supervised Autonomy and will deploy it to remotely clear snow for multiple big box retailers beginning in winter 2024. An operator in a remote central location will control the machine for late-night snow removal, working around traditional retail business hours. The company is also utilizing the machine for site preparations, landscaping, and grading. Alff is testing Teleo’s technology in order to evaluate its potential for a future expansion across the country.
Construction
MS Park Construction, a construction company and wholly-owned subsidiary of PNK Group located in New York, has placed an order for 10 machines. Ten machines will be immediately equipped with Teleo’s technology on eight John Deere 410P ADTs and two 850L SmartGrade bulldozers by the end of this year to build a large logistics warehouse site located in the Atlanta, Georgia area. The articulated dump trucks will perform large scale earthmoving, and will autonomously move dirt across the construction site. The dozer will perform precision grading. The company plans to bring their vision of a fully remote and autonomous jobsite to fruition.
MS Park Construction is leveraging Teleo’s technology to improve the safety and efficiency of its operations. This includes reducing idle machine time and truck bunching, which is when faster trucks are slowed by the presence of slower trucks, and results in production losses and increasing fuel consumptions and idle time. Additionally, the company is working closely with Teleo and Dobbs Positioning Solutions, a division of Dobbs Equipment, which is also facilitating the deployment with MS Park Construction, to create an operator training plan. The program will leverage Dobbs Positioning Solutions’ remote command center located at its Atlanta store, and Teleo’s testing site to train MS Park Construction’s operators to ensure they are well equipped to supervise the autonomous machines upon deployment.
To learn more about the future of automation of off-highway vehicles such as mining equipment, hear keynote speeches about the latest innovations in the field, and visit a wide array of exhibitors, book your tickets to the DZOM EXPO, taking place at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Centre in Chicago, IL, on December 3–4, 2024.
For more information, visit our website or email us at info@innovatrix.eu for the event agenda.
Read this article over on the Innovatrix blog and discover our other articles and events.
Source: