Caterpillar Accelerates Autonomous Equipment Efforts with Domain Expertise at Core

Caterpillar's push into autonomous equipment is gaining momentum, but the company remains focused on leveraging its domain expertise to drive returns.

Speaking at CoreWeave's Fully Connected 2026 conference in San Francisco, Brandon Hootman, VP of physical AI platforms and construction autonomy at Caterpillar, said the company has been working on autonomy for over a decade, primarily in structured environments such as mine sites with predictable haul roads.

However, the complexity of unstructured environments like construction sites requires a different approach. 'It was only just three or four years ago where the dream of being able to bring autonomy operations to a construction site almost felt unrealistic,' said Hootman.

Caterpillar has recently announced an expansion of autonomous hauling with Luck Stone, and a partnership with FieldAI to leverage robotics, digital twins, and Nvidia technologies at job sites. The company is also working on adding more autonomous equipment news flow in the near future.