When will those trials lead to autonomous construction machinery doing real work on construction sites? “We’ll get there,” Weiss says, but Caterpillar’s partners need to be comfortable with the technology’s maturity. “There are risks involved, and we’re on that journey, learning with them as we go, so that when we are commercially ready, they’re ready and comfortable with the product.”

Weiss says that Caterpillar started work on automating mining operations and construction sites around the same time, more than a decade ago, but…