Watch: Robo-trucks clear land for Naples luxury community, operated from Fort Myers

Despite all of the strides made with technology and all of the developments taking place with artificial intelligence, it's difficult to comprehend something we saw recently in the world of automation.

Autonomous construction equipment company Teleo recently published a video on YouTube showing its customer, Florida-based Tomahawk Construction, using remote operated and autonomous articulated dump trucks to clear land for a new 700-acre luxury residential community in Naples.

Here's the part that is difficult to comprehend: those massive dump trucks were being controlled by a person sitting in an office in (drumroll) ... in Fort Myers! ... (drumroll) ... 40 miles away!

What to know: autonomous dump trucks in Naples

According to a press release from Futurista Communications::

• As experienced operators retire, the industry is struggling to attract much-needed new operators to fill job vacancies, resulting in spiraling project costs and timelines. “We really have just had a hard time getting people into haul trucks,” said Tomahawk owner Scott Lyons.
• A single Tomahawk operator remotely and simultaneously operates three Teleo-equipped articulated dump trucks to help solve Tomahawk’s labor shortage.
• Teleo retrofits any make, model and year of heavy equipment with its technology that enables remote and autonomous operations of the machines.
• The operator is sitting in Fort Myers and is using a command center to control the autonomous trucks in Naples.
• The land Tomahawk is developing is the future home of Caymas Naples, a luxury community of 457 single-family homes by Stock Development,

Who is operating the autonomous dump trucks in Naples?

His name is Max Bogacz. What he is doing has never been before.

“I am the first operator in the world to run multiple articulated dump trucks at once,” said Bogacz.

Tomahawk recently became the first customer to get Teleo’s autonomous capabilities on their machines. This means that while machines are set to autonomous mode, they can perform routine and repetitive tasks on their own, like hauling materials from one point to another.

If there are any complex tasks that the autonomous technology cannot yet fully handle, the machine waits for the operator and Bogacz is there to take over. Bogacz easily switches between machines with the press of a button.