[HN Gopher] Ex-Waymo engineers launch Bedrock Robotics to automa...
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Ex-Waymo engineers launch Bedrock Robotics to automate construction
Company announcement: https://bedrockrobotics.com/news/introducing-
bedrock-robotic...
Author : boulos
Score : 67 points
Date : 2025-07-16 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| fidotron wrote:
| This will prove to be a strange business.
|
| Civil engineering is already a field where the very largest
| projects are done by humans planning and building the roads and
| bridges for the robots to move in (such as things rented from
| Mammoet [1] with extra control systems), but it does require
| significant human oversight (typically a metaphorical red
| button).
|
| It's all very one off and specific, and given how big those
| projects are that seems unlikely to change. The manufacturing of
| suburbs though would be a whole different ballgame.
|
| [1] Specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
| propelled_modular_transpo...
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| Do you know anything about the current state of this? I think
| large construction equipment providers are already doing this?
| padjo wrote:
| "executes work around the clock" of limited value given quite a
| bit of construction is subject to restrictions on operating
| hours.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Think of any construction that's remote though. Especially
| infrastructure. Wouldn't it be cool if a bunch of excavators
| could just work all day and night to dig that trench, move that
| huge amount of dirt from one place to another? I feel like
| there are lots of situations where automation could be done.
| brudgers wrote:
| At the scale where automated earth moving equipment makes
| economic sense, those restrictions often won't apply. Highway
| construction and other vertically integrated projects are where
| this potentially makes sense.
|
| Operating hours are the least of logistical hurdles for most
| projects. Schedule coordination dominates and the critical path
| can only move as fast as the slowest element on it.
| xnx wrote:
| Is this a scenario where offshore operators doing remote
| equipment control would be 90% as good as a US union worker for
| 15% of the price and could work in shifts 24/7 (e.g. for mining
| operations)? Sensor + control data would be great training for
| future AI.
|
| Jumping straight to autonomous operations seems expensive/hard.
| menzoic wrote:
| Genius transition plan
| beau_g wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing but the cost of an equipment
| operator isn't that significant compared to the expense of
| running and especially maintaining these machines, and if
| teleop incurs more maintenance cost or efficiency loss due to
| clumsier operation, it's definitely a step in the wrong
| direction financially.
| gdbsjjdn wrote:
| I'm assuming for stuff like mining and oil fields most of the
| cost is having people on site to service the equipment, not
| just operating the equipment. You need the robot that can
| service the other robots, and then the robot that can service
| itself.
| bluGill wrote:
| The hard part with remote and automation is you often are in
| mud. Local humans are still much better able to run the edge of
| getting stuck. and if you do get stuck local help is needed to
| get unstuck.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| There's a startup not far from me working on remotely operated
| construction machines. They explicitly are targeting
| terrestrial as well as space operations, but I would be curious
| if the communication latency to any reasonably close celestial
| object would require autonomous operation.
| Teever wrote:
| This is interesting, I've been thinking about similar stuff.
| Can you share the name of the startup?
| AI_beffr wrote:
| when its construction: jobs will be completely automated away.
| when its white collar: AI is simply a tool!
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Only the jobs that get to decide where AI will be used (and pay
| for the service) are safe from AI.
| AI_beffr wrote:
| i think the obvious cognitive dissonance is mostly fueled by
| denial. it's acceptable for them to believe that the dirty
| blue collar people will fall on hard times. also they don't
| want to believe that white collar jobs will be lost because
| you can't use the "teach the coal miners to code" meme-think
| on it. turns out reality can be a little counter-intuitive
| sometimes. sometimes it can even be different from what you
| see on TV! wow!
| jschveibinz wrote:
| In general, the construction industry doesn't like change. This
| would be a CHANGE.
| paxys wrote:
| No industry likes change until it is forced to change.
| moontoast wrote:
| Automating construction vehicles is not so much about safety
| (like passenger vehicles) but perhaps about labor cost and
| efficiency.
| taeric wrote:
| I didn't think open field construction was hampered by the humans
| in the loop? Quite the contrary, I was under the naive impression
| that the heavy machinery was already largely doing the vast
| majority of the work. Even when operated by a human.
|
| Will be neat to see where this goes. But I'm reminded of some
| Amazon guys that were supposed to revitalize the supply chains.
| My memory is that that didn't work out so well.
| winrid wrote:
| It's interesting because the heavy machinery already replaced
| 20-50 humans. Now somehow that one person that has a job is an
| issue.
| echelon wrote:
| Do you know how much California High Speed Rail is over
| budget?
|
| What if we could bring massive infrastructure projects down
| from the billions to the millions? Wouldn't that be a great
| thing for all of society?
|
| What if we could build new power plants, connect all cities
| with HSR, rebuild all our old bridges, add thousands of new
| skyscrapers, and do it all under budget?
|
| Think about what steel did for society. Automated
| construction is the next highest order step function change.
| It'll be insanely good for society.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| CAT and others (hyundai, hitachi, john deere, kubota, komatsu,
| etc) are already exploring this sort of automation (and have
| been for at least a decade).
|
| This isn't somehow a new industry because some Waymo engineers
| decided to make a company.
| echelon wrote:
| Venture dollars won't back those legacy efforts.
|
| This may be an instance of companies not having enough
| capital or talent to fend off new entrants.
|
| Talent will flock to the new and exciting. The place where
| they can get the bigger exit and work with the coolest
| people.
| taeric wrote:
| The odds that these companies don't have moats to protect
| their tech is... very unlikely?
| netfl0 wrote:
| Excited to watch this fail.
| khurs wrote:
| why?
| ecshafer wrote:
| I think that more than physics the bottleneck for this is
| political (at least in the US). All of the local large projects
| around me are expensive because of massive amounts of red tape
| (environmental studies, zoning, planning), and political
| patronage systems. After the kick backs, political donations,
| promises to only work 8 hours a day, only use union labor, hire x
| police officers for y hours in overtime security positions a
| month, use xyz contractor etc. a small cost seems to be the
| actual labor and materials. Hell these robots if they work will
| be made illlegal.
| tippytippytango wrote:
| We need a silver tongued LLM agent that can align all these
| forces (and a well provisioned MCP paypal tool for greasing
| palms)
| matthewolfe wrote:
| I believe SchemeFlow [0] is working on solving some of these
| problem, particularly with the insane reporting requirements.
| But of course, that still leaves the unions...
|
| [0] https://www.schemeflow.com/
| pj_mukh wrote:
| I think this is true, but even after a construction company
| works through all the approvals the sheer cost of construction
| is insurmountable. A big part of this is obviously (union)
| labor. This happened recently in NIMBY-HQ Berkeley as interest
| rates crept up [1]. Pre-approved construction sites are sitting
| empty.
|
| I am off the (not so controversial) opinion that labor should
| be paid fair wages, but I think it's also fair to use tech like
| this to multiply labor productivity.
|
| The last piece is the cost of raw materials, which has also
| ballooned.
|
| [1]: https://www.berkeleyside.org/2025/04/04/berkeley-housing-
| dow...
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Permitting, zoning, etc are all like <3% of a construction
| project's cost. This is a meme with no basis in reality.
|
| All of the cost is labor and materials.
|
| That said, the _time component_ of the zoning, permitting etc
| is very costly due to how real estate projects are funded and
| evaluated.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > massive amounts of red tape (environmental studies, zoning,
| planning)
|
| Well, we've seen what happened _without_ the red tape, when
| people were free to do whatever the fuck they wanted, and the
| results often aren 't pretty. Sometimes, they were deadly, and
| occasionally we are reminded of why it might not be a good idea
| to just let the "free market" do what it wants [1].
|
| Red tape doesn't just appear out of thin air, it appears when
| politicians are so pissed off about the "free market" that they
| actually find it worthwhile to do their goddamn jobs for once.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_de...
| khurs wrote:
| That's not directly related to this topic? This guy isn't
| starting a construction company. He is intending to sell tech
| to existing ones.
| shorbaji wrote:
| With the construction equipment market at $160B, this certainly
| is quite a sizable niche. Specializing in it is clever.
|
| And an $80M round sounds sane these days
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Bedrock Robotics is focused on developing a self-driving kit
| that can be retrofitted to construction and other worksite
| vehicles
|
| > Bedrock is "upgrading existing fleets with sensors, compute,
| and intelligence that understands project goals, adapts to
| changing conditions, and executes work around the clock,"
|
| I can also imagine this applying to all kinds of mining too,
| where there's already all the heavy equipment to mine and
| transport resources and we're just turning it into a robot so
| they don't have to employ a human anymore.
| themanmaran wrote:
| One big barrier I haven't seen mentioned is all the OEM
| competition they are going to face.
|
| Caterpillar, John Deer, etc. already have remote operation
| vehicles. And a lot of provisions on what types of kits can be
| retrofitted onto their equipment without violating their
| terms/warranties.
|
| I'm sure this is already something they've taken into
| consideration, but it seems like this will be more focused on
| partnerships with existing OEMs rather than selling add on kits
| to current fleets.
| echelon wrote:
| > Caterpillar, John Deer, etc. already have remote operation
| vehicles. And a lot of provisions on what types of kits can be
| retrofitted onto their equipment without violating their
| terms/warranties.
|
| Sounds ripe for disruption, then.
|
| If a startup demonstrates promise, VC money will flood in. Then
| it's just a balancing of economics. Is the new VC-backed method
| cheaper? If so, the incumbents will lose market share relative
| to the value prop.
| beau_g wrote:
| To the parent posters point though, those manufacturers are
| holding outsized control over what can be retrofit to their
| machines, so to disrupt them, you have to make your own
| machines. Working on and owning heavy equipment myself, I of
| course have looked at it and thought there's a lot to
| improve, but at the the same time, I don't really see where
| the big brain Silicon Valley + venture bucks ethos can be
| applied to the space, it would be a long and slow grind of
| doing mostly straightforward mechanical engineering and
| supply chain/vendor agreements to build something like a
| bulldozer, just to enter a near impenetrable market due to
| many existing sunk costs and long relationships between
| buyers and the existing manufacturers.
| khurs wrote:
| The money raised is $80m rather than $800m which likely
| reflects all the challenges faced.
|
| It's the kinda startup that may be able to pivot easier than
| others.
| CharlesXY wrote:
| Definitely echo the concerns about bureaucratic red tape (looking
| at you, California high-speed rail fiasco) that kind of
| environment makes innovation in infrastructure extra hard. Still,
| there's something compelling about Bedrock's approach if they can
| genuinely deliver a system that adapts in real-time to the
| complex nature of construction sites. The big question is whether
| they can win through retrofitting existing fleets or by locking
| in tight partnerships with OEMs, adding to that the competition
| is going to be pretty tough
| khurs wrote:
| > is focused on developing a self-driving kit that can be
| retrofitted to construction and other worksite vehicles
|
| Seems sensible a project. $80m raised also seems a sensible
| amount. And the guy has a background in this field. Good luck
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| Just nonstop putting people out of work lol.
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