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 Assistant,” 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 Assistant 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.
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“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 provided a kind of a technology foundation for us to then build upon.”
Working with companies like Caterpillar — a legacy brand that doesn’t often intertwine with the tech industry — seems to fit right into Nvidia’s physical AI strategy.
Bill Dally, Nvidia’s chief scientist, told TechCrunch in 2025 that the chipmaker considers physical AI to be the next frontier for the company and its powerful GPUs.
During its CES keynote on Monday, Nvidia laid out plans for its full-stack ecosystem for physical AI, which includes open AI models like the company’s Cosmos model family, simulation tools, and developer kits.
While some may think physical AI is just for robotics companies, Deepu Talla, the vice president of robotics and edge AI at Nvidia, told TechCrunch the company takes a much broader definition as everyone is building robotics today.
“Physical AI is the next wave of AI,” Talla said. “Nvidia is pioneering that with computers that train the models, that do the simulation to test the models and deploy the models into the robots, whether [that’s] an autonomous car or a Caterpillar machine.”
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This piece was updated to include the full name of the Cat AI Assistant.
