Gravis systems are already used by industry giants in construction, and for the autonomous handling of quarry materials with Holcim and others — supporting site preparation, stockpile management and the loading of trucks and screeners. Most recently, Gravis Robotics broke ground at a Taylor Woodrow infrastructure project at Manchester Airport – the UK’s first large-scale use of autonomous excavation on an active construction site.

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Gravis is also now partnering with the UK’s largest plant hire provider Flannery to provide a combined rental package for construction customers, enabling a turnkey excavator solution that is already equipped with the Gravis Rack. A similar model is available through the dealer networks of Gravis’ OEM partners, where its Develon-integration has been deployed in the UK, and most recently with Kibag in Switzerland.

Founded in late 2022 as a spinout from ETH Zurich, Gravis is tackling construction’s biggest challenges – rising demand, falling output and an ageing workforce – by targeting productivity, not processes.

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Drawing on the team’s deep expertise in AI and autonomy, the retrofit system goes far beyond simple commands. It adapts to real ground conditions through a learning-based control system that “feels the soil” using data from hydraulics, LiDAR, cameras and GNSS. This intelligence is paired with Gravis Slate – a tablet interface designed to fit seamlessly into construction workflows, that uses the robotic sensor suite to also augment manual operations – creating a continuous data loop that helps Gravis improve performance and expand its autonomous capabilities at speed.

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Purpose-built to handle the unpredictability of sites across a range of tasks, from trenching and earthworks to grading, material handling and more, Gravis enhances human teams rather than replacing them, boosting output 30%, reducing rework, and improving safety. One partner, Morgan Sindall Construction described Gravis’ robotic excavator “as productive as a skilled machine driver – and in some instances, enhanced team efficiency.”

The traction Gravis has seen in just three years not only gives it a commercial edge in the 1.6 trillion-dollar earthmoving industry but highlights the frontrunner advantage it’s gained scaling from Europe.

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Europe’s contractors punch well above their weight on a global scale: the revenue of the top five is roughly equal to that of the top 28 in the US. Having to define, operate and scale under high cross-border standards makes European construction global by design. So much so, the majority of revenues (~60%) come from international projects. Those same standards now make Europe a proving ground for new systems like autonomous earthmoving, and a launchpad for global deployment. What’s more, being based in Zurich, a renowned robotics and automation hub, Gravis stands at the very heart of this ecosystem.

The Gravis team is engineered for this exact problem – blending construction insights, state-of-the-art learning-based robotics, and senior OEM leadership experience. Co-founder and CEO Ryan Luke Johns is an architect, roboticist and holder of the Guinness World Record for the largest dry-stone wall built by a robot. Co-founder CTO Dominic Jud is a robotic systems expert in autonomous control systems for complex machinery. The duo met in the lab of co-founder and board member Marco Hutter, a renowned expert in AI and serial entrepreneur in robotics.