Hitachi showed off Gravis Robotics’ new Copilot system on its ZX135US-7 excavator at ConExpo 2026, a retrofit kit allowing the machine to go from fully manned to completely autonomous operation in minutes.
Gravis Robotics, founded in 2022, provides autonomy kits for earthmoving equipment, combining real-time terrain visualization, excavation depth guidance and human form recognition with operator control. The company calls its new Copilot system “the industry’s first commercially available machine-guidance platform that is autonomy-ready for operators.”
The video above features a live demonstration of the system’s capabilities — including autonomous trenching and bulk excavation. Justin Condor, product specialist for Hitachi Construction Machinery Americas, is shown training the ZX135US-7 excavator to dig a trench. A member of the audience then demonstrates how to activate the excavator to trench autonomously based on Condor’s inputs.
The system includes the Gravis Rack, a modular, roof-mounted hardware kit including LiDAR, HDR cameras, GNSS receivers and computing systems, and the Gravis Slate, a portable tablet that enables in-cab and off-machine remote operation of the equipment.
Key features include:
- Real-time augmented terrain and mapped utility visualization
- 3D people scanning protection
- 3D surveying and precision grading
- Autonomous repetitive tasks
- Remote operation
Gravis Copilot at Work
Acknowledging the growing labor shortage in the industry, Gravis says its technology was developed with a two-tiered approach: enhancing the abilities of an operator and automation to multiply the operator’s impact.
Real-time surveying gives an operator an instant visual of the work that needs to be completed. Operators can upload a CAD file for a site and see the target terrain highlighted along with boundaries and buried utilities. For added safety, the system alerts the operator when a person has entered the designated work zone.
With the Gravis Rack retrofit kit, an operator can import a site plan to the excavator, and it can perform repetitive tasks — such as trenching and truck loading — or a predetermined site excavation path with no one touching the machine’s controls.
Because Copilot is built on Gravis’ platform perception and compute Rack, every machine equipped with the kit is autonomy-ready, allowing contractors to adopt autonomy at their own pace: starting with one system and scaling across machines, fleets and crews when ready.
Gravis-powered machines are integrated across multiple OEM platforms, including Hitachi and Develon, and are currently deployed across major infrastructure and materials projects in the U.S., UK, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
[Your Next Watch: How Bluelight's $50K Autonomy Kit Can Boost Productivity Up to 14%]
Equipment World serves up weekly videos on the latest in construction equipment, work trucks and pickup trucks — everything contractors need to get their work done. Subscribe and visit us at equipmentworld.com!
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:36:27
Speaker 1
And then Justin will be using our Copilot system that augments expert operator skills with our sensor speak. So on top of Justin, we see our rack installed with our leader, as well as P60 cameras and GPS. And soon on the screen, you'll see our tablet interface that shows you a real time digital twin of the machine. So you see it right here as Justin's digging and reading, modifying the terrain, and you see that very same terrain in real time on the LED screen.
00:00:37:00 - 00:00:40:19
Speaker 2
And he's got that in the cab as well. He's seeing what we're seeing.
00:00:40:22 - 00:01:12:27
Speaker 1
Exactly. So he has the same tablet in the cab, but you could also use the tablet from outside, connect it to the same machine. And Justin could also use a tool as a surveying tool, effectively with his buckets. So I could import an excavation zone getting dusty over here. I could import a zone from a file, and we could just define the trench with the bucket with and the target away from that same file and start working on that.
00:01:12:27 - 00:01:17:18
Speaker 1
So effectively getting surveying from our bucket.
00:01:17:20 - 00:01:29:27
Speaker 2
And that is a trench right there. Or a very long break for the world's tallest man, I guess. Now before we saw colors all over it, what did the colors represent? And I'd still see the colors on the sidebar on the right.
00:01:30:00 - 00:01:38:25
Speaker 1
Right. So I can set another terrain. I can actually also import that from a cat file to show you.
00:01:38:27 - 00:01:45:17
Speaker 1
And the colors you see when we see blue. We're a little bit too high up and we see that we're too low.
00:01:45:17 - 00:01:46:01
Speaker 2
So its.
00:01:46:01 - 00:02:00:22
Speaker 1
Depth exactly the depth of the bucket. And when it's clean, where exactly are grade? So this terrain is a little bit deeper, about 0.5m from the top of this in here.
00:02:00:25 - 00:02:05:12
Speaker 2
It's not taking big scoops. So let's keep the test down. That's great.
00:02:05:12 - 00:02:23:13
Speaker 1
But and our whole kit gives Justin even more superpowers. So you can see this pipe that's running underground. You can also import these to enable our operator to see through the ground and not in any utilities.
00:02:23:16 - 00:02:28:05
Speaker 2
I thought that was one of those Arizona killer snakes.
00:02:28:07 - 00:02:43:29
Speaker 1
You could also input that. But you also have a real time video stream that's helping Justin with an AR overlay with whatever he's working on. And in this section here, you see the terrain depth that I set that he could go down to.
00:02:44:01 - 00:02:46:25
Speaker 2
Amazing.
00:02:46:28 - 00:02:59:14
Speaker 1
And come to grab this booth to see our real time people detection as well. That's making Justin work even safer and even more productive.
00:02:59:17 - 00:03:25:18
Speaker 1
All right. So that was our Gravis Copilot system. Thank you so much, Justin, for showing us. So this system, our rack, as well as our sensor kit and our tablet enable operators to perform complex tasks with superpowers such as seeing underground, importing cats without serving, using our machine as a surveying tool, and also seeing people around the machines.
00:03:25:20 - 00:03:42:22
Speaker 2
Here for Justin Heck of a job with these superpowers. Come on over here. You are gonna do the exact same. Well, you're going to dig a trench. Have you got any experience of working on one of these machines I've done at a time or two? Well, that doesn't even matter. A child, a small baby, could do what you're about to do.
00:03:42:22 - 00:03:46:29
Speaker 2
But I chose you because, you know. So go see Dolma, and she'll let you know what you're going.
00:03:46:29 - 00:04:09:06
Speaker 1
To do. Nice to meet you. So I showed you before that you can import trenches. But setting a trench is actually as simple as just tapping a few times here. So I'll just tap twice. And this will just use our machines bucket to define an excavation zone. So let's say somewhere here we have to stay within the safety boundary.
00:04:09:10 - 00:04:37:19
Speaker 1
And launching an autonomous task without an operator is as simple as just pressing start. So do you want to do the honor? You may press start on the tablet and then we have to decide where to dump. So let's do right side. So the opposite side away from the audience and then preview. Yeah that's good. Can you and we can run the task confirm and I'll figure out some nice work.
00:04:37:22 - 00:04:38:27
Speaker 1
Debut works.
00:04:38:29 - 00:04:47:17
Speaker 2
It also played some video games. But this is games handiwork right here. Now he is with his mind. He is controlling that. We will get around.
00:04:47:18 - 00:04:49:17
Speaker 1
Impressive.
00:04:49:20 - 00:04:59:20
Speaker 2
Take. Where are you at what company? With Mitchells excavating out of Indiana for them. What?
00:04:59:22 - 00:05:23:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. So you can see our autonomy at play right now. This is very handy for repetitive and high impact tasks like trenching. What we'll see right now, but also bulk excavation or truck loading. And in fact, we've had multiple machines in different countries over the past year, and we are production sites using this technology for similar tasks.
00:05:23:02 - 00:05:41:02
Speaker 2
And if you were just walking into our booth area right now and take an operator fill out of that and it's just running, you know, wildly. No, no, it's very much under control. And just about this. So it's going to go there we go. Enjoy that a little dusty sandwich over there folks sitting on that side. There you go.
00:05:41:05 - 00:05:52:00
Speaker 2
You have lake brushes. We'll get you cleaned up. Let me ask you. Obviously you got a number of these working out there. What about the safety factor? Somebody wanders into the area.
00:05:52:01 - 00:06:06:00
Speaker 1
Yes. So we actually have a safety operator with an east of an emergency stop right now. But we also have the safety boundary defined that you see in the orange line on the screen. So the bucket or the trucks cannot exceed that.
00:06:06:06 - 00:06:12:20
Speaker 2
So that's safety. Person could look over multiple machines if working. Correct.
00:06:12:23 - 00:06:19:23
Speaker 1
And a one safety operator would look at multiple machines working at the same time. It's actually Gabe.
00:06:19:23 - 00:06:40:03
Speaker 2
This is a beautiful trench. I'm proud of the trench you're digging. Yeah, it looks good. That's all. You, brother. That is all you medical science and technology. But still it's you. He pushed the button. He made a couple of choices. Yeah. There it is. Something, folks. You're looking at the future right here.
00:06:40:06 - 00:07:00:29
Speaker 1
And you could see the machine was just creating the bottom of the trench. And in combination with our copilot system, we both augment operator skills but also help with autonomous, high impact tasks.
00:07:01:02 - 00:07:04:10
Speaker 3
For more videos like this, click the playlist on the screen now.
