While many of the flashy, marquee mobility and transportation demos that go on at CES tend to be of the more... aspirational variety, Honda's electric cargo hauler, the Autonomous Work Vehicle (AWV), could soon find use on airport grounds as the robotic EV trundles towards commercial operations. Honda first debuted the AWV as part of its CES 2018 companion mobility demonstration, then partnered with engineering firm Black & Veatch to further develop the platform. The second-generation AWV was capable of being remotely piloted or following a preset path while autonomously avoiding obstacles. It could carry nearly 900 pounds of sutff onboard and atow another 1,600 pounds behind it, both on-road and off-road. Those second-gen prototypes spent countless hours ferrying building materials back and forth across a 1,000-acre solar panel construction worksite, both individually and in teams, as part of the development process.

Honda is known for both vehicles and robots, and over the last few years it has tried combining those two things with the Autonomous Work Vehicle (AWV). It just unveiled a new 3rd-generation version designed to transport up to two palettes worth of goods around worksites with no human assistance. This time, though, Honda is keen to find companies willing to try it out. The AWV has evolved from what was basically an ATV with the top chopped off, to a glorified autonomous electric wagon to the current model. Compared to the 2nd-generation version, the latest AWV has a larger bed size (two pallets) and higher capacity (2,000 pounds); a higher self-driving speed of up to 10 MPH; a larger battery that offers up to 10 hours and 28 miles of endurance; better avoidance functions; and a lower bed for easier loading.

At CES 2018, Honda revealed several companion mobility robot concepts. It's moving forward with at least one of them, an autonomous vehicle that can go off road. Honda and engineering company Black & Veatch have been putting the second-gen Autonomous Work Vehicle (AWV) through its paces at a solar panel construction site. This was the first field test in which several AWVs were working together. The vehicles towed trailers and carried construction materials, water and other supplies across the 1,000-acre worksite.