Flo Mobility, 2021 to 2024
Autonomous Material Mover
A driverless, all-terrain electric dumper that moves building material around a construction site on its own.
My role
Product Owner, then Head of Product at Flo Mobility. My team built the autonomous driving system behind Flo's material movement robots.
What it does
- Carries material across rough site terrain without a driver.
- Runs on an electric drivetrain with swappable batteries, so a flat battery does not stop work.
- Takes a customisable dumper body, and works with hoists and cranes to lift material to the floor where it is needed.
- Reports what it is doing to a live analytics dashboard.
Who it was for
Construction companies moving cement, bricks and aggregate around large sites, where manual barrows are slow, tiring and a common cause of injuries.
Key specs
| Operation | Driverless, autonomous all-terrain |
|---|---|
| Payload | 500 to 700 kg |
| Drivetrain | Electric |
| Batteries | Swappable |
| Efficiency | 6x in material movement |
| Integration | Optimised for hoists and cranes |
| Monitoring | Integrated analytics dashboard |
Values as published on the archived product page.
How it works
- Sensors on the vehicle feed real-time data to its driverless operation and to the site dashboard.
- An electric powertrain gives instant torque on slopes and loose ground with no exhaust on site.
- Swappable batteries keep downtime short, and the dashboard shows each vehicle's work in real time.
Results and where it was used
- The product page states a 45% reduction in time and a 50% reduction in cost.
Pictures and video
Source: archived flomobility.com page, 30 September 2023; image from the February 2024 capture.