Leica Geosystems recently wrote a think-piece for Construction Equipment on autonomy. Vice president of construction Troy Dahlin pondered that perhaps 5 percent of the jobsite today is autonomous. “A good goal over the next 10 years is to reach around 40 to 50 percent autonomy, meaning not fully autonomous but rather more automated components, with a few autonomous assets we can leverage,” explained the Leica VP in this article.

Construction jobsites remain difficult places for robots — because construction sites are constantly changing — but semi-autonomy? Now, that has some potential. A semi-autonomous machine can perform specific tasks automatically — such as steering, grading, traveling to a waypoint, or completing a repetitive work cycle — but a human operator remains responsible for supervising. Danfoss Power Solutions recently argued that autonomy is advancing through operator-assist functions. Grade control, bucket positioning, obstacle detection, and depth limiting will automate certain tasks while keeping the operator in charge.

With my brain orbiting all these ideas, TerraFirma suddenly popped up on my radar (the algorithm doing its work). The construction and robotics company, based in Austin, Texas, specializes in human-supervised semi-autonomous construction equipment, and the business just raised approximately $115 million, including a $100 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins (the Silicon Valley-headquartered venture capital firm). From this press release:

“Construction is the foundation everything else is built on, and it’s been going backward for 50 years,” said Noah Schochet, CEO and cofounder of TerraFirma. “America built the transcontinental railroad, the interstate highway system, and the Hoover Dam. There's no reason we can’t build at that scale again, and there’s no first-principles reason construction can’t become 10x faster, cheaper, and safer. TerraFirma exists to help America build again and then take that capacity into the cosmos.”

The cosmos? Like the name might imply, TerraFirma is also interested in space exploration. The company was founded by SpaceX engineers Noah Schochet and Noah McGuinness, and the company has a mission (a marketing mission?) to eventually build infrastructure on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. But first…

Who the heck is TerraFirma?

Right now, TerraFirma is a company that retrofits conventional excavators, dozers, loaders, rollers, skid steers, and other heavy equipment so operators can control machines remotely from screens rather than sit in the cab. The company’s tech-stack combines “AI-enabled pre-construction software, a remote command-and-control center, and retrofitted semi-autonomous heavy machinery,” said the release. This model keeps skilled operators involved, orchestrating multiple semi-autonomous machines remotely. Watch the video below. It's pretty cool. The company claims to make each operator up to 300 percent more "effective."

Schochet and McGuinness founded TerraFirma after working on SpaceX programs like Starlink, Starshield, and Starship. Their big revelation came while trying to reach space.

From the company website:

“At [SpaceX] Starbase [its South Texas launch site], the hardest part of reaching Mars wasn’t building the rocket, it was building everything around it. Roads, power, water, communications, housing, and the foundational systems took more time, money, and coordination than the spacecraft itself. We saw firsthand how outdated construction slows down innovation.”

TerraFirma is already doing jobs

TerraFirma has some cool case uses for its technology. Watch that video above. The company used its technology for site preparation, excavation, and grading work surrounding a new Starbucks in North Austin. TerraFirma has also worked on a sports arena in Spicewood and a power substation in New Braunfels, Texas. The company is also involved in mysteriously unnamed U.S. government infrastructure and logistics projects. From the press release:

“TerraFirma is succeeding at real-world scale, proving the business model works, and securing government and commercial contracts. This is clearly where the industry is headed,” said Josh Coyne, Partner at Kleiner Perkins.

What’s all this about Mars?

TerraFirma’s long-term ambitions get considerably more interesting once we leave Earth’s atmosphere. The company wants to eventually use its construction technology to build infrastructure on other planets and moons. 

“The technology that we are building today to solve critical challenges here on Earth will be highly reusable to solve those same challenges on the Moon and Mars,” said Noah Schochet.