Dusty Robotics

Dusty Robotics develops robotic solutions for the construction industry, focusing on automating manual workflows to improve efficiency and accuracy. The company's flagship product is the FieldPrinter, an autonomous mobile robot that prints layout plans directly onto construction site floors. The FieldPrinter works with existing Building Information Modeling (BIM) designs to transfer layout plans into the field, completing the process up to 10 times faster and more accurately than traditional manual methods. It prints all information from the BIM onto the floor, including layouts for each trade and details about wall types and door styles. The system also creates continuous progress reports and communicates field status back to project teams in real-time.

Founded in 2018 by Tessa Lau and Philipp Herget, Dusty Robotics aims to address inefficiencies in the construction industry, where 85% of projects finish over budget. The FieldPrinter eliminates one of the most common sources of conflict on construction projects: incorrect hand-drawn layout using chalk lines. By automating this process, Dusty's solution ensures that all trades build from the same set of plans, reducing errors and expediting conflict resolution.

In the first quarter of 2022, Dusty's printers laid out more than 25 million square feet on the floors of buildings. The company's FieldPrinter 1.0 release, launched in 2022, includes features such as automatic obstacle detection and avoidance, QR code printing for instant access to construction documents, and real-time progress monitoring. As of May 2022, Dusty Robotics was valued at USD 250 million.

Key customers and partnerships

Dusty Robotics has gained widespread adoption among construction firms in the US. Several dozen contractors are using the FieldPrinter solution on job sites across the country, including major players such as DPR Construction, Swinerton, PARIC, Performance Contracting Inc., and Southland Industries. DPR Construction has used Dusty's solution on sixteen projects across the US, allowing their foremen to focus on being the best craftsmen instead of doing time-consuming manual layout work.

Other notable users of Dusty's technology include Skanska, which utilized the FieldPrinter on Sutter Health's Samaritan Court Ambulatory Care and Surgery Center project, and California Drywall, which employed the system on the Stanford University Data Science and Computation Complex project. Truebeck Construction has also implemented Dusty's solution on a 41,000 square foot mixed-use office and lab project. These partnerships demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of Dusty Robotics' technology across various construction project types and scales.