Autonomous heavy equipment
Autonomous machines that work alongside people.
mule.bot builds Iron Context, the tools above the machine: the sites and machines measured from public registers, the field context a machine needs to work the way a competent crew does, the planning that keeps a fleet productive, and the test tracks that show a system doing the work. Hitch connects them to your machine. We consult with the same tools.
Why
Half the workforce retires within the decade.
More than half of the heavy-industry workforce retires within the decade. Fewer people will supervise more machines, and those machines will work near people.
Large-fleet autonomous haulage serves mines with fifty trucks or more, on a single vendor's closed system. Mid-tier sites cannot buy that. They are a countable set on the federal register, and no one is building for them.
Iron Context
Iron Context is seven tools above the machine.
Iron Context is all of these tools, and the written interface between each pair. Each tool has its own site: a public page, and more behind a sign-in. Ask us for access.
Iron Context as a whole is at ironcontext.si, behind a sign-in.
Iron DetectorSites and machines
Every mine, quarry, earthwork, landfill and cargo dock is on a public register. We join the registers to aerial imagery, draw each site, and count the machines working on it.
Iron CurriculumField context
What a competent crew does, in what order and under which rules. We read operator training courses, mine and heavy civil operating procedures, codes of practice and standards, and write them down as use cases and plays, each cited to its source so a specification can rely on it.
Iron YardMachine roster
The machine roster: dimensions, limits and 3D models read from the makers' published specification sheets. Each model is rigged at its working joints (boom, stick, bucket, blade, body, articulation, tracks), so it moves the way the machine moves.
Iron TacticsPlanning
Tactical planning from the actual earthmoving: which machine runs which play, where and in what order, turned into work orders a machine can drive. It takes the strategic plan from BlockModel. The gain from autonomy is in hours recovered, not in cycle time.
Iron RangeTest tracks
A standing set of test tracks, and a track built from a customer's own site. Each track runs plays from the playbook, the named shapes of the jobs machines do. A planner or a whole autonomy stack drives the same track and leaves a record that replays.
Iron TableSimulation
The site in three dimensions, worked by machines drawn to their makers' sheets. Every run is a record and a film, whether it replays recorded work or plays out a plan.
Iron PitEarth and physics
The physics under the Iron Table. Ground that is cut, carried, dumped and compacted, and that settles to its own slope: blades, buckets, scraper bowls, truck bodies and tires all work the same ground. The machine models and the containers of a port yard run on it too.
Figures counted from our repositories on 11 November 2026. Ask for any of them and we will show the source.
Hitch · how we do it
The full system, less the machine.
Hitch is a complete heavy mobile system for autonomous work beside manned machines, developed to align with ISO 17757. It connects to your machine or your system, and provides as much as the whole system less the machine, or as little as the one interface your product needs.
It has two parts. On the machine: the safety functions, the path planners and the trackers. At the site: the supervisor system, which is the operator's surface, mission release, and stop authority over every autonomous machine. It is written from the top down and every level is tested.
Concept of operations
The mission, the site use cases, the operating modes, and the operational design domain: where the system may work, in what conditions, and beside whom.
Requirements
Market requirements at the top, product requirements for each of four systems beneath them, technical requirements beneath those. Each traces up to its source and down to its test.
Hazards, and the safety case
Six hazards anchored to the industry's collision scenarios, analyzed by two methods, with five safety goals and the functional safety requirements that follow from them.
Safety functions
Perception, corridor broadcast, spatial enforcement, remote stop, stop arbitration, command authority, and operating-condition monitoring. They decide what the machine will and will not execute.
Function blocks and interfaces
Four systems: on-machine autonomy, the safety controller, the supervisor system, and the communication network. The interface documents between them are where another product connects.
Tests
From the single function block up to the site scenario, each tied to the requirement it checks. The planners and trackers carry 2,800 more. The specification runs as code.
Where you fit
Hitch is the rest of the system: safety functions, planning, supervision and the operator's surface, above your drive-by-wire.
Your autonomy runs the machine. Take the parts you do not have: the supervisor system, the safety functions, the planners, or the test tracks.
We connect at the interface your product defines, and build as much of that interface as the product needs.
Developed to align with ISO 17757, ISO 13849-1, ISO 23725 and IEC 61784-3. No third-party assessment is claimed.
Consulting
We bring the tools to your site.
We take on work for operators and for the teams that build autonomy, and we do it with the tools above. You get the answer and the records behind it.
You keep the machine: control, perception, path following and the retrofit kit stay with your team. The site and the autonomy team both sign the safety case.
What we take on
- Site and market screeningTarget sites, fleet counts and operating conditions for a region or a commodity, drawn from public records. Iron Detector.
- Operations scenario analysisYour operation modeled as it runs, a change proposed, and the two compared before money is spent. Iron Tactics, BlockModel and Iron Table.
- Autonomy validationA track built from your customer's site, recorded runs, a scenario coverage matrix, and a trace from each scenario to a safe state. Iron Range and Hitch.
- Safety engineeringThe hazard analysis, the requirements and the safety case, developed to align with ISO 17757 and the standards around it.
- Deployment planningSite readiness, specification, operating boundary, field testing, commissioning. Each stage ends with a signed gate.
Who we are
Thirty years in heavy mobile autonomy.
Across mining, construction and heavy civil, and port and rail logistics. Drills, explosives loading, haulage underground and on the surface, earthmoving, and cargo handling. On the vendor side and as the owner's independent reviewer. Architecture at Pronto.ai, SafeAI and ASI/Epiroc, for mines, quarries and port terminals. The owner's independent check on Caterpillar and Komatsu deployments. A doctorate in functional safety for heavy mobile autonomy.
Partners
Track record
- 8 of 10Between them, the partners have delivered services and products to eight of the ten largest aggregates producers in the United States.
- 30 yearsSome of those producers have been customers for more than thirty years.
- Beyond the pitAutonomy for construction and heavy civil earthmoving, and for port and rail yards.
- TodayOur tools are being delivered under contract to public and private aggregates producers and autonomy companies.