Look… No Operator!

Our Canadian friend Scott Colclough aka Pushysix has been down in California checking out a remotely operated dozer.

Once upon a time the thought of heavy machinery working remotely by themselves would have been the stuff of science fiction, but on large scale projects around the world it is now becoming commonplace to see dozers and more so giant rigid dumptruck’s running remotely and autonomously.  

It’s a scenario that still blows my mind, and I’m yet to be convinced of its safety credentials as from an operator’s perspective, you cannot feel the ground shifting beneath you or understand the ground conditions when sat in an office miles away from the machine.

However, technology waits for no man or woman, and companies are working hard to perfect these kinds of systems. One such tech company is Teleo who have developed a way to retrofit a wide variety of construction equipment so it can be operated remotely.

On the jobsite Pushysix visited one Cat D10T had been retro fitted with the Teleo system and had been integrated into a fleet of manually operated dozers, so two Cat’s on this job were being operated in the traditional manner with operators in the seat, while the Teleo fitted machine was being operated by an operative sat in an office.

The company suggests you could effectively operate a piece of equipment, anywhere in the world. I know some of us in the media have had the opportunity in the past to operate a large Cat dozer remotely in Arizona from a screen in the UK, its almost hard to comprehend at times.   

Checkout the video below from Pushysix Media.