Tunneling and Underground Robots
Robots that drill, spray, inspect and build underground and in tunnels.
14 robots · 20 companies · from the Future of Built file
By trade
- Coating · 8
- Earthmoving · 3
- Demolition · 1
- Drilling · 1
- Inspection · 1
Robots
Baubot
Conjet
Caterpillar
Flybotix
FTS
Normet
Gengli
Putzmeister
CIFA
AMVCompanies
- Caterpillar · Irving, United States · founded 1925
Cat Command lets one operator run heavy iron remotely or semi-autonomously - mining, civil, and the big cuts.
- Baubot · Vienna, Austria · founded 2018
Fischer Group’s mobile construction robot. Drills, marks, measures, and installs from the digital plan - including inside tunnels.
- Conjet · Österhaninge, Sweden · founded 1989
Hydrodemolition robots. High-pressure water instead of jackhammers - removing bad concrete without wrecking the steel.
- Flybotix · Lausanne, Switzerland · founded 2019
Confined-space inspection drones for tanks, ducts, and tunnels - the voids a conventional UAV cannot enter.
- Kinamics · Santiago, Chile · founded 2021
Chilean robots in Codelco tunnels. Built to keep people out of rockburst zones - mining construction that the Andes actually run.
- SafeAI · Santa Clara, United States · founded 2018
Autonomous heavy equipment for mining and earthmoving. Retrofit autonomy, existing fleets, supervised production.
- The Boring Company · Bastrop, United States · founded 2016
Prufrock tunnel-boring machines. Not a jobsite mascot - a TBM aimed at civil contractors who still bid tunnels.
- Epiroc · Stockholm, Sweden · founded 2018
Autonomous drill rigs and underground loaders. Mining construction, not a press-demo arm.
- Sandvik · Sandviken, Sweden · founded 1862
AutoMine loaders and trucks. The underground loop that used to need a person in the cab.
- RCT · Perth, Australia · founded 1975
Remote and autonomous control for mining and earthmoving. Perth, the teleremote cab.
- GMT Robotics · Brondby, Denmark · founded 2018
Mega WeldMate and WeldMate weld rebar mesh and cages adaptively. Brondby. Tunnel-segment welding demos - fab-first but construction steel.
- FTS · Toyohashi, Japan · founded 1989
Hercules is an erector-integrated tunnel shotcrete machine; Hercules-AUTO adds millimetre-wave thickness sensing with Maeda and Nishimatsu. Toyohashi. Field intro 2026.
- Normet · Iisalmi, Finland · founded 1962
Minimec and Spraymec lines are remote shotcrete robots for tunnels and mines - tracked and wheeled spraying arms with nozzle control. Iisalmi. Underground concrete support staple.
- Gengli · Zhengzhou, China · founded 1992
GHP3017E is an engineering wet-spray trolley - remote boom shotcrete for tunnels, slopes, and civil lining. Zhengzhou. Henan shotcrete OEM catalog.
- Putzmeister · Aichtal, Germany · founded 1958
Wetkret 3 is a compact tracked shotcrete robot for small tunnel sections - SA 9.1 spraying arm, remote nozzle. Aichtal. Underground concrete spraying staple.
- MEYCO · Winterthur, Switzerland · founded 1929
Potenza is a high-output wet-shotcrete spraying machine with RoboJet manipulator for tunnels and mines. Winterthur lineage under Master Builders Solutions.
- CIFA · Senago, Italy · founded 1928
Mamba is a mobile underground shotcrete sprayer with articulated boom for tunnels and mines. Senago (Milan). Zoomlion-owned concrete equipment OEM.
- Shotcrete Technologies · Idaho Springs, United States · founded 1980
Shot-Tech remote robotic shotcrete arms for tunnels, mines, slopes, and civil lining - Idaho Springs, CO. Four decades of wet-mix shotcrete gear, nozzles, and field crews.
- AMV · Flekkefjord, Norway · founded 1949
AMV 4200H is a truck-mounted high-capacity shotcrete robot for tunnel, mining, and rock support - Flekkefjord. Ecospray nozzle head for wash + spray; siblings 6400 / 7450 in the AMV shotcrete line.
- Delair · Toulouse, France · founded 2011
DT46 and sibling fixed-wing UAVs map construction, mining, and linear infrastructure - Toulouse. Long-endurance survey without the multirotor battery swap every few minutes.
Frequently asked questions
- What robots are used in tunneling?
- Drilling jumbos, shotcrete sprayers, inspection robots and boring machines with automated functions.
- Which companies are on the tunneling and underground robots list?
- Future of Built lists 20 companies here, including Caterpillar, Baubot, Conjet, Flybotix, Kinamics, SafeAI, The Boring Company and Epiroc.
- Where are these companies headquartered?
- By headquarters: United States (4), Sweden (3), Switzerland (2), Australia (1), Austria (1).
- How many of these robots are deployed?
- Of the 14 robots on this page, 13 deployed, 1 production, per the Future of Built file.