Caterpillar is diving deeper into incorporating AI and automation into its fleet of construction machinery through a partnership with semiconductor giant Nvidia.
The construction equipment giant is piloting an AI assistive system in its mid-size Cat 306 CR Mini Excavator. Dubbed “Cat AI,” the system was built using Nvidia’s Jetson Thor physical AI platform, and is being demoed at CES on Wednesday.
Brandon Hootman, vice president of data and AI at Caterpillar, told TechCrunch that Cat AI was built on a fleet of AI agents and can help answer a machine operator’s questions, allow them to access resources, offer safety tips, and schedule services.
One of the biggest benefits of bringing this tech into these machines is the data that these systems collect and send back out.
“Our customers don’t live in front of a laptop day in and day out; they live in the dirt,” Hootman said. “The ability to get the insights and take the action that they need while they’re doing the work is very important to them.”
Caterpillar is also piloting digital twins of construction sites using Nvidia’s Omniverse library of simulation resources to test scheduling scenarios and better calculate how much building material a project will need. Hootman said Caterpillar’s machines send roughly 2,000 messages back to the company every second. This data will help them build these simulations.
The company already has fully autonomous vehicles in the mining sector, and Hootman said that these pilot programs are a great next step as the company looks to bring more automation to its portfolio.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
“The reason that we started here was it was a real challenge of our our customers today that needed to be addressed, and also something that we had some some real momentum on and we felt like we could we could bring to market pretty quickly,” Hootman said. “What we also liked is that provid …