Haulotte–Builder Assist robots on MEWPs: productivity and safety insights for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Haulotte is partnering with French startup Builder Assist to mount a robotic arm on its mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs) for overhead drilling and automated painting and coating of façades in live site trials. The pilot fleet is being deployed on real jobs to quantify cycle times, positioning accuracy and operator exposure benefits when combining MEWPs with task‑specific robotics. The move builds on Haulotte’s 2020 collaboration with AMBPR on the Autonomous Mobile Blast Paint system for cleaning, blasting and painting large vertical surfaces in shipyards and heavy industrial environments.
Technical Brief
- Trials are being run in live construction environments rather than controlled test yards or labs.
- Task focus is explicitly on “dangerous, dirty or dull” overhead work, targeting risk and fatigue reduction.
Our Take
Haulotte is one of only a few access-equipment OEMs appearing in our 831-item Infrastructure database, so a move into robot-ready MEWPs in the United Kingdom signals that automation is now being baked into the platform design rather than added as aftermarket tooling.
The presence of AMBPR (Autonomous Mobile Blast Paint) alongside Builder Assist suggests this is targeting high-exposure surface prep and coating tasks, which could materially reduce working-at-height risk profiles on large infrastructure refurbishments in the UK.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
