Teleo, a company building autonomous technology for heavy construction equipment is expanding its strategic focus to deploy autonomous heavy machinery such as wheel loaders, terminal tractors, excavators, and more into new industries beyond construction. Sources: Timberbiz, PR Newswire
The company 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 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 centre, making the operator’s role safer, comfortable, and more accessible. Teleo’s technology helps address the growing labour 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.”
US 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. RYAM will deploy the Teleo-equipped machines to haul bark and wood chips 24/7 at its pulp and paper mill in Florida.
An operator remotely operates one wheel loader to load bark and then it is autonomously hauled by the machine to an incinerator that burns it to produce energy that powers the facility.
A second wheel loader is operated remotely to load wood chips that are then autonomously hauled to a bin for processing for paper manufacturing. The third Teleo-equipped wheel loader will be rotated in as needed to ensure continuity of 24/7. Two of the three machines are deployed and beginning in late fall a single operator will oversee the machines from one of two command centres.
“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 centre also provides a more accessible and safer environment for our operators, who can oversee multiple machines from the comfort of an office.”
Teleo global partner network dealer Dobbs Positioning Solutions was responsible for introducing the technology to RYAM and facilitating the deal between the companies.
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 labour shortage and to improve overall operational safety. Teleo global dealer network partner Sumirai, formerly called SR-O Technology, facilitated the collaboration with Fin-Terpuu Oy.
