Technology News from Highways.Today
Eclipse Space Sets Out a New Model for Customer-Owned Satellite Constellations
Eclipse Space Sets Out a New Model for Customer-Owned Satellite Constellations Owning a satellite is one thing. Owning the communications network, spacecraft, ground infrastructure and operational capability behind an entire constellation is considerably harder. Eclipse Space is building its business around closing that gap. The Redmond, Washington company has unveiled three spacecraft platforms c… Read more…
Motif Design Takes AI Agents Into the Building Model
Motif Design Takes AI Agents Into the Building Model Motif has launched the product that reveals what a team of former Autodesk executives has been building with $46 million of investment: a browser-based BIM authoring platform designed from the outset for architects and AI agents to work on the same live building model. Motif Design … Read more…
ASTM Moves Standards Upstream as Emerging Technologies Converge
ASTM Moves Standards Upstream as Emerging Technologies Converge ASTM International has reorganised its emerging technology work around a much broader remit, replacing its Advanced Manufacturing Division with a Critical and Emerging Technologies Division covering fields ranging from artificial intelligence and robotics to quantum technology, semiconductors, biotechnology and commercial space. ASTM… Read more…
Spotter AI Brings Intelligence Into Everyday Trucking Operations
Spotter AI Brings Intelligence Into Everyday Trucking Operations A dispatcher deciding where to send an empty truck, a recruiter trying to fill a driving position and a claims manager chasing a missing proof of delivery appear to be dealing with quite different problems. Increasingly, however, they are working with variations of the same raw material: … Read more…
Sovereign AI Brings Intelligence Back Inside Critical Infrastructure
Sovereign AI Brings Intelligence Back Inside Critical Infrastructure Artificial intelligence is beginning to acquire something it largely avoided during the first wave of generative AI adoption: a physical location. For governments, infrastructure operators and heavily regulated businesses, where an AI model runs is becoming increasingly difficult to separate from where operational data is stored… Read more…
Ouster and GeoCue Push Drone LiDAR Further Into Infrastructure Mapping
Ouster and GeoCue Push Drone LiDAR Further Into Infrastructure Mapping Drone surveying of power lines, transport corridors and major infrastructure is becoming an increasingly demanding sensing problem. Aircraft need to cover long distances efficiently while still capturing conductors, structural edges and other relatively small features, often from altitudes dictated as much by operating constrai… Read more…
The 80,000 Year Engineering Project to Alpha Centauri
The 80,000 Year Engineering Project to Alpha Centauri Launch before the end of 2029. Spend less than $15 million. Carry at least one kilogram. Get within one per cent of the distance to Alpha Centauri in no more than 80,000 years. Those are the four constraints behind the Fermi Explorer Mission, a newly established US … Read more…
Pegasus Lunar Rover Turns to LiDAR for Autonomous Moon Mobility
Pegasus Lunar Rover Turns to LiDAR for Autonomous Moon Mobility AEye’s Apollo long-range lidar is heading for the Moon. Lunar Outpost has selected the solid-state sensor for Pegasus, the Lunar Terrain Vehicle being developed to carry Artemis astronauts across the Moon’s South Pole region. The multi-million-dollar agreement puts Apollo aboard a vehicle programme for which … Read more…
Raleigh Turns Drones and GeoAI into a Living Digital Twin of the City
Raleigh Turns Drones and GeoAI into a Living Digital Twin of the City Raleigh is building a digital representation of the city that is designed to change whenever the city itself does. Drone surveys of construction sites, infrastructure, storm damage and public spaces can be processed into new imagery and three-dimensional models, fed back into … Read more…
Allient Brings GaN Power Electronics to Professional Drone Propulsion
Allient Brings GaN Power Electronics to Professional Drone Propulsion Every gram and watt matters aboard a professional multirotor, making the electronic speed controller between the battery and propulsion motor a surprisingly consequential piece of hardware. Allient has now brought gallium nitride power electronics into that part of the system with its Vyxalon Apex Drone Drive, … Read more…
CECE Congress 2026 Brings Europe’s Construction Equipment Leaders to London
CECE Congress 2026 Brings Europe’s Construction Equipment Leaders to London More than 150 senior figures from Europe’s construction equipment industry will gather at IET Savoy Place in London from 27 to 29 October for CECE Congress 2026, bringing manufacturers, associations, economists and industry specialists together to discuss the economic, technological and competitive pressures facing the … Read more…
BEX Asia 2026 Puts Practical AI and Robotics at the Centre of Construction Technology
BEX Asia 2026 Puts Practical AI and Robotics at the Centre of Construction Technology More than 200 exhibiting brands will gather at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 2 to 4 September for BEX Asia 2026, but one number gives a better indication of where the exhibition is heading: organisers expect around 60% of exhibitors … Read more…
Understanding How APIs Support Logistics Automation
Understanding How APIs Support Logistics Automation Modern logistics depends on information moving almost as efficiently as the freight itself. A single road shipment may involve an ERP platform, warehouse software, a transport management system and a carrier’s own technology. When these systems cannot communicate directly, employees often become responsible for moving information between th… Read more…
The Real Bottleneck in Physical AI and Robotics is Data
The Real Bottleneck in Physical AI and Robotics is Data The robotics industry has spent the past two years discovering that its hardest problem is no longer the robot. Compute is abundant, actuators are capable, and vision-language-action models can turn a set of demonstrations into a working manipulation policy. What remains scarce is the material those … Read more…
From Belgrade to Chicago: Spotter AI Targets the Networks Behind US Freight
From Belgrade to Chicago: Spotter AI Targets the Networks Behind US Freight A single billboard at an airport rarely counts as industry news, yet the placement Spotter AI has chosen for its first outdoor campaign says more about where value is concentrating in American road freight than most product launches manage. The company, a New … Read more…
Membrane Refining Crosses from Chemistry into Engineering
Membrane Refining Crosses from Chemistry into Engineering A cluster of research results published in the first half of 2026 has quietly moved membrane-based crude oil separation out of the materials-science laboratory and towards the refinery fence line. For most of the past decade the idea of separating hydrocarbons by pushing them through a polymer film, … Read more…
Autonomous Satellites Could Change how the World Responds to Wildfires
Autonomous Satellites Could Change how the World Responds to Wildfires Wildfire detection has spent decades as a by-product of general Earth observation, something inferred from weather satellites and land-imaging missions that happened to catch a thermal anomaly on their way past. That arrangement is now ending, and it is ending quickly. In barely eighteen months … Read more…
Liebherr Turns Excavator Durability Testing Into an Autonomy Proving Ground
Liebherr Turns Excavator Durability Testing Into an Autonomy Proving Ground On paper, the new test rig that Liebherr France SAS commissioned at Colmar in early 2026 is a durability tool. It costs close to EUR 2.5 million, sits inside an enclosed hall, and exists to punish crawler excavator structures until their weak points reveal themselves. … Read more…
Asphaltica 2026 and the Compliance Economy Reshaping Road Construction
Asphaltica 2026 and the Compliance Economy Reshaping Road Construction When the road engineering value chain gathers at Bologna Exhibition Centre from 7 to 10 October, the headline attraction will be the four SITEB Agorà sessions and more than thirty technical workshops. The more consequential story sits underneath the programme. Since December 2024, environmental performance has … Read more…
Beyond the Loader: The Automation Layer Now Deciding Underground Mining
Beyond the Loader: The Automation Layer Now Deciding Underground Mining When RCT technicians commissioned the last Caterpillar R2900G ever sold, at a silver and lead operation in Queensland, the moment carried more weight than the retirement of a single machine. The loader in question, an NLK-specification unit, was the fourth of four new R2900G LHDs … Read more…
Komatsu and AIM Put Physical AI at the Centre of Autonomous Earthmoving
Komatsu and AIM Put Physical AI at the Centre of Autonomous Earthmoving Komatsu has spent nearly two decades proving that heavy machines can run themselves. Its FrontRunner system put the first commercial autonomous haul trucks into mines in 2008, and in April 2026 the company became the first manufacturer to commission a thousand ultra-class driverless … Read more…
JAPAN BUILD Tokyo 2026 Reflects the Convergence Reshaping Asian Construction
JAPAN BUILD Tokyo 2026 Reflects the Convergence Reshaping Asian Construction When RX Japan brings JAPAN BUILD back to Tokyo Big Sight from 2 to 4 December 2026, the headline detail is the scale: eleven specialised exhibitions covering everything from building materials and tiles to renovation, digital construction, smart buildings and property technology, gathered under a … Read more…
JCB LiveLink Update Marks Shift From Machine Monitoring to Remote Fleet Control
JCB LiveLink Update Marks Shift From Machine Monitoring to Remote Fleet Control For close to two decades, construction telematics has been sold on visibility. Fleet owners were promised they would finally know where their machines were, how hard they were working and when they needed servicing. JCB’s latest update to LiveLink moves the proposition somewhere … Read more…
Fuel Certification Emerges as the Real Prize in Europe’s Renewable Fuel Pilot
Fuel Certification Emerges as the Real Prize in Europe’s Renewable Fuel Pilot Twenty passenger cars circulating around Spanish filling stations would not ordinarily register as an industrial story. The six-month pilot launched in early July 2026 by Bosch, Toyota Motor Europe, BMW Group and Repsol matters for a different reason: the fleet is not really … Read more…
Wireless Trailer Vision Becomes the New Battleground in Fleet Safety
Wireless Trailer Vision Becomes the New Battleground in Fleet Safety Rear View Safety has launched an upgraded version of its AirVue wireless trailer camera platform, adding proximity sensing and expanding capacity to six cameras across a mixed wired and wireless architecture. Read as a product announcement, it is an incremental specification uplift. Read against what … Read more…
Generative Search Emerges as the New Gatekeeper for AI BIM Automation
Generative Search Emerges as the New Gatekeeper for AI BIM Automation OFA Group’s disclosure on 14 July that its QikBIM platform had recorded 161 discovery events originating from ChatGPT-related searches is, on its own, a modest data point from a Nasdaq-listed architecture and technology company still in the opening weeks of commercialisation. Read against what … Read more…
BCU and HadleyFRAME Show How Automation Is Reinventing Structural Engineering
BCU and HadleyFRAME Show How Automation Is Reinventing Structural Engineering A research project costing a fraction of an enterprise software licence has just demonstrated something the construction technology market has been slow to price properly. Researchers at Birmingham City University, working with Midlands light steel specialist HadleyFRAME, have built two custom automation programs that re… Read more…
Stevens Equipment Rental is Leading Britain’s Shift to Intelligent Wheel Loaders
Stevens Equipment Rental is Leading Britain’s Shift to Intelligent Wheel Loaders Stevens Equipment Rental has taken delivery of its 1000th new machine, and the choice of asset says more about the direction of the UK plant market than the milestone itself. The Cumbrian rental business, trading for more than 50 years and formerly known as … Read more…
Epiroc is Betting on Connected Mining in Mexico
Epiroc is Betting on Connected Mining in Mexico Six weeks after Epiroc elevated its long-running relationship with Ericsson into a global go-to-market alliance for private LTE and 5G, the Swedish equipment group’s Mexican organisation has signed a partnership with Rajant Corporation to deliver Kinetic Mesh wireless networking to mining customers across the country. Taken individually, …… Read more…
Digital Construction North Announces 2026 Call for Speakers
Digital Construction North Announces 2026 Call for Speakers Digital Construction North has opened submissions for its third edition, returning to Manchester Central on 18 November 2026 with a deadline of 7 August for speaker proposals. On the surface this is a routine piece of event administration, the sort of notice that circulates quietly through the … Read more…
Aeonsemi LumaReach Broadband and the Economics of Avoiding the Trench
Aeonsemi LumaReach Broadband and the Economics of Avoiding the Trench The hardest part of a full-fibre rollout is no longer the fibre. Trunk routes, distribution rings and passive optical splitting are mature engineering, procured against known unit rates and delivered by contractors who have been building them at scale for a decade. What remains stubbornly … Read more…
P&M Excavations Builds a Competitive Edge on a Decade of Trimble Machine Control
P&M Excavations Builds a Competitive Edge on a Decade of Trimble Machine Control A family-run civil engineering contractor from County Tyrone has spent ten years proving a point that much of the wider construction sector is still only beginning to accept, which is that sustained investment in digital machine control changes the economics of groundworks … Read more…
Hitachi and Pronto Put Mixed-Fleet Autonomy at the Centre of Mining’s Future
Hitachi and Pronto Put Mixed-Fleet Autonomy at the Centre of Mining’s Future The strategic partnership between Hitachi Construction Machinery and Pronto points towards a more commercially accessible model for mine automation, one designed around the equipment operators already own rather than an entirely new fleet tied to one manufacturer. Their memorandum of understanding covers the … Read more…
Commercial UAV Expo Brings FAA and EASA Together on BVLOS Drone Operations
Commercial UAV Expo Brings FAA and EASA Together on BVLOS Drone Operations Routine beyond visual line of sight drone operations could alter the economics of infrastructure inspection, surveying, emergency response and asset monitoring. Their wider adoption would allow one operator to cover longer corridors, supervise remote missions and collect data repeatedly without maintaining visual contact &#… Read more…
Topcon and GreenValley Alliance Targets the Next Generation of Spatial Intelligence
Topcon and GreenValley Alliance Targets the Next Generation of Spatial Intelligence The strategic agreement between Topcon Positioning Systems and GreenValley International signals a wider change in how geospatial technology is being developed and sold. Surveying is moving beyond individual instruments and desktop processing packages towards connected systems capable of capturing, interpreting and… Read more…
How Robotic Hydrodemolition is Reshaping Concrete Repair
How Robotic Hydrodemolition is Reshaping Concrete Repair Concrete repair rarely makes headlines, yet the economics of how a bridge deck or car park slab is stripped back and rebuilt sit close to the centre of the maintenance challenge facing most developed economies. Governments across Europe and North America are managing ageing structures poured decades ago, … Read more…
HTEC and Embotech Accelerate the Industrial Rollout of Level 4 Autonomous Logistics
HTEC and Embotech Accelerate the Industrial Rollout of Level 4 Autonomous Logistics The industrial autonomy market is entering a new phase where engineering execution, certification and scalable deployment are becoming just as important as advances in artificial intelligence. As autonomous vehicle technology matures, manufacturers, ports and logistics operators increasingly need solutions that can… Read more…
The Roads That Autonomous Vehicles Need Don’t Yet Exist
The Roads That Autonomous Vehicles Need Don’t Yet Exist Autonomous vehicles are coming to the UK but are our roads ready? The lane-keep assist and driver safety systems fitted to millions of cars depend on being able to read road markings and signage clearly. On British roads as they currently stand, that is not always … Read more…
SPH Engineering Launches 2026 Global Drone Operations Awards
SPH Engineering Launches 2026 Global Drone Operations Awards SPH Engineering has opened applications for the Global Drone Operations Awards 2026, an international recognition programme aimed at advanced drone work in industrial, scientific and engineering settings. On its surface this is a competition. Read against the state of the sector, it is closer to an attempt … Read more…
Graitec Stakes its AECO AI Strategy on Accountability and Sign-Off
Graitec Stakes its AECO AI Strategy on Accountability and Sign-Off Graitec, the French-headquartered structural software developer and one of the world’s largest Autodesk partners, has set out an artificial intelligence strategy that deliberately reframes the debate now running through the architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AECO) sector. While much of the industry is rac… Read more…
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