Telematics and positioning giant Trimble outlined a new partnership with original equipment manufacturer John Deere, doubled its partnership with Caterpillar and announced a natural language artificial intelligence-based tool at the its Trimble Connect project management platform at the Trimble Dimensions conference held in Las Vegas. , from November 11 to 13.
Deere in the spotlight
On Oct. 22, John Deere announced it is partnering with Trimble to integrate the construction giant’s Earthworks grade control technology into Deere’s SmartGrade platform. This will give Deere customers access to Trimble’s technology ecosystem, including its advanced positioning systems as well as telematics and level control features.
Ron Bisio, Trimble’s senior vice president of field systems, said Deere customers will receive access to Trimble’s GNSS receivers and radio frequencies, as well as through its SmartGrade software. No date was announced for when the integration will be implemented, but Deere and Trimble executives said Earthworks tools would be available to customers on Deere machines sometime in 2025.
Connecting with AI
Trimble touted several of its AI products, telling the more than 7,000 users in attendance that it remains committed to developing AI-based tools that improve workflows, whether they’re used by field operators or architects in their offices working on SketchUp.
Trimble demoed SketchUp Diffusion, an AI-powered generative tool that was showcased as part of the event’s SketchUp Labs program. Based on the Stable Diffusion AI platform, it allows architects to generate images based on user input and iterate on their design intent based on text prompts and preset visual styles.
“What we’re exploring now is multi-query AI, which provides autonomy to the AI agent to make decisions,” says Aviad Almagor, Trimble’s vice president of technology and innovation. “For that, you need to give the AI the ability to reflect on its work, to iterate, and give it access to APIs, historical datasets and other types of data, or even coding environments “, he said. ENR at the conference.
Mark Schwartz, Trimble’s vice president of AECO, said Trimble is trying to create an ecosystem for its construction and design data where that data can flow to where it’s needed in a non-fragmented way.
“We have hardware, software and data trying to work together as best as possible,” Schwartz said.
To that end, Trimble CEO Rob Painter introduced a new AI feature for the Trimble Connect platform that can work with natural language queries and can return results in a list form. The generative AI companion is still in beta, but Trimble executives said it will be publicly available next year.
Keeping up with the cat
Trimble and Caterpillar chose to expand their 22-year joint venture Caterpillar Trimble Control Technologies on Oct. 2. The new agreement includes expanded distribution of level control solutions across the Cat product fleet.
Caterpillar customers can access Trimble technology through factory fitment options and expanded digital and aftermarket offerings directly from Cat dealers.
Through the joint venture, Trimble customers have ongoing support from SITECH’s mixed fleet of dealers and access to level control through the Trimble Construction One platform.
Other announcements made by Trimble at the user conference included a beta test for field teams using SiteWorks to automatically receive information from Trimble’s B2W management platform that connects the field and the office. Painter said all major ERP systems can now connect to B2W in a “low-code” manner using Trimble’s AppExchange.
