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Newsletter N°80 - September 2025
🏗️ Construction :Shimizu’s Innovation Machine: Advancing Construction through Automation and Digital Technologies
Shimizu Corporation, in partnership with Bosch Engineering and Yamasaki Construction, has officially begun field trials for its new autonomous bulldozer, the Smart Dozer, aiming to deploy it on construction sites by the end of 2025.
Faced with an aging workforce and a shortage of skilled operators, Japan’s construction industry has been searching for ways to maintain productivity while ensuring safety. The Smart Dozer project, in development since 2020, seeks to address this challenge by automating key earthmoving operations traditionally performed by human operators.
The bulldozer is equipped with high-precision environmental recognition systems capable of detecting obstacles, soil piles, other machinery, and terrain features in real time.
Its autonomous control systems manage the machine’s movements, blade operations, and emergency stops, while automatic route generation software calculates the optimal path for leveling the ground, adapting dynamically to site conditions.
Smart Dozer
Object recognition function
Automatic topographic map generation function
By automating heavy-duty operations, Shimizu expects the Smart Dozer to significantly improve productivity, reduce the workload for human operators, and enhance safety on site.
The company envisions extending this technology to other construction machinery, moving closer to fully unmanned construction environments.