Construction equipment autonomous technology company Teleo and Storm Equipment, one of the largest distributors of commercial snowplow equipment, today introduced what they say is the only remote-operated and autonomous industrial snowplow commercially offered in the U.S.

The companies worked with support from Teleo dealer RDO Equipment Co. to retrofit a John Deere 332G skid-steer loader with Storm Equipment’s Metal Pless snowplow blade and Teleo Supervised Autonomy technology that enables remote and autonomous operations. The machine is designed for mass snow clearing in large open areas such as industrial parking lots.

“Commercial snow removal, specifically mass snow clearing in large parking lots and on other long stretches of open, flat surfaces, is yet another ideal application for our technology,” said Teleo Co-founder and CEO Vinay Shet. “When heavy snowfalls occur, there is an immediate need to clear parking lots and commercial sites so businesses can continue operating. The collaborative Teleo-Storm Equipment approach introduces a way to get the job done more efficiently, safely, and without customers having to purchase new machines; that makes it a realistic solution for companies of all sizes.”

Customers can order the retrofit of any make and model of heavy equipment for remote-operated and autonomous operations from Teleo along with an autonomous-ready snowplow blade properly sized for each machine type from Storm Equipment. Once outfitted with the retrofit kit, the machines are supervised by an operator sitting in a central command center—a more comfortable and attractive working environment than a traditional snowplow operator working from the equipment’s cab on site.

The machines were developed to help solve staffing shortages in the commercial snowplow industry, where snow contractors are covering larger regions and working long overnight hours, by allowing a single hired operator to work in multiple regions simultaneously. Initially, the snowplows will be remote-operated, and autonomous capabilities will be added in the first half of 2024.

“Remote operation of snowplows is a truly disruptive prospect for the industry,” said Jordan Smith, Owner of Storm Equipment. “Snow removal companies typically don’t have just one make or model in their fleets, so the fact that Teleo’s technology can be retrofitted onto virtually any make and model of heavy machinery makes it a great option for the industry.”

Using Teleo’s system, the shrinking pool of skilled snowplow operators can cover a lot more ground in a shorter time. They can easily switch among different loaders and plows on job sites across town or even in a different state. This effectively could quadruple the productivity of a single skilled staff member, creating better operational efficiencies for the snow contractor.

The technology could also open snowplowing opportunities to those who are not already heavy equipment operators. Today’s streaming gamers could become tomorrow’s remote snow-plow operators.

Fleets of machines for applications such as loading gravel, peat moss, and other bulk materials in warmer months are used to move snow in the winter months. Teleo’s technology can be easily retrofitted on those fleets, introducing the ability to integrate remote and semi-autonomous technology without the need to purchase new machines. The same machines can be used year-round for snow removal, landscaping, and other site work. This level of flexibility makes the system extremely scalable and cost-effective.

 

Common building blocks

Teleo says its end-to-end solution for turning equipment into supervised autonomous machines uses basically the same technology whether for snowplows or other construction equipment. It can be retrofitted to any make or model and mixed fleets. The system’s hardware and software components are built in-house by engineers for the three main components.

“Teleo provides a full stack solution which comprises the universal retrofit kit, a mesh network, and control stations for the operators,” Teleo Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Romain Clement, told Futurride. “The technology, electronics, firmware, and software underlying each of these components has been designed and developed in-house by Teleo. They use sensors and computing technologies originally designed for self-driving cars. The retrofit kit itself is mounted typically outside the equipment, most commonly on the roof while the control stations are based in an office-like environment at the customers’ proffered location.”

With the ruggedized universal retrofit kit, an operator can toggle between manual and autonomous modes and between different machines within seconds. The mesh network ensures uninterrupted connectivity across work sites and offers mobile solar stations for power. The remote command center, which can be on-site or a long distance away, enables the operator to control equipment in the comfort of an office and offers a 360° field of view around the machine.

 

Behind the unique supervised approach

Teleo co-founders Clement and Shet have known each other for about a decade with the relationship going back to their days developing self-driving cars at Lyft and Google. That time and relationship laid the groundwork for another more imminent application of autonomous technology.

“After working for several years on self-driving cars, it felt at the time that the technology would not ship anytime soon, or at least not at the timeframe that I think the industry was hoping for in the years [around] 2016-2017, mostly from a technology perspective,” recounted Clement to Futurride in an interview late last year. “However, if reapplied in a much simpler environment, and on a slower vehicle, it would be good enough to build a [viable] product. And if you look at most self-driving programs, they all have a need for teleoperation at some point.”

Instead, Teleo took a different approach, “building a very good teleoperation solution and then injecting autonomy to increase the machine-to-operator ratio,” he said. “That way you’re entering into a much more flexible, right, and hybrid approach to autonomy, and also much more pragmatic and gradual improvement of autonomy.”

The result is the company’s Supervised Autonomy system blending human and autonomous operators.

Construction emerged rapidly as a key target market for the company. According to Clement, it’s a very large industry, “not a bad thing to start with a large addressable market,” but it has a lot of different use cases. They range from very simple in very restricted environments with very few vulnerable humans to much more complex like a construction site on a highway at night, “which is not something you want to start with at all from an autonomy perspective.”

In addition, there is a significant labor shortage in construction.

“It’s been very bad for the last 10 years,” he said. “It’s global. Nobody wants to do that job, not the new young generation, and in a way, rightly so. It’s a very tough job. It’s been the number one pain point for all general contractors.”

To tackle the labor shortage, the Teleo system can blend into today’s construction operation very nicely with a human behind every machine but increasing machine-to-operator ratio.

In addition, a key feature of Teleo’s offering is that it is “genuinely an OEM agnostic solution,” said Clement. The technology can work on any type of machine, any brand, and any vintage—the last point is “a pretty big deal because there’s a lot of machines which are 10-15 years old.”

 

Vertically integrated, gradual, and strategic

Clement says that Teleo is “extremely vertically integrated, designing our own hardware, we’re owning all of our firmware, all of our software. This is required to really deliver the very best experience to the user.”

He says it is important to own the UI (user interface) for real-time applications that must be very safety aware. With a lot of components in the system, continuous health checks are needed so that if something were to go wrong or get slightly delayed, then the system must go into a safety mode.

As the company eases more into autonomy, so does its approach to sensors and positioning technology. Its system uses GPS and cameras from the start, and Clement says it will gradually add lidar and radars.

“That’s also the beauty of our approach,” he said. “If you’re doing self-driving cars for the downtown of a city, you need to have the entirety of the sensor suite on the vehicle on day one. When you’re starting from the other end [of autonomy], where you don’t have to worry about anything smaller than 30 cm or a half meter, and you’re going to go at 5 mph, you don’t require the full suite of sensor tech.

“Because we know which vehicles we’re going into in advance, and the environment we’re going to be deploying, we can be very gradual and strategic,” Clement concluded.

That’s potentially the most beautiful approach.