Artificial Intelligence is on track to revolutionize the construction industry like few technologies before it. But how can it be applied to heavy equipment? For several years now, artificial intelligence (AI) has been gaining in capability and reliability as the technology is developed and improved. Today, AI in construction is becoming more and more commonplace, offering a wide variety of advantages to construction professionals and their clients. In particular, AI has capabilities that can greatly improve operations on construction sites.

Californian company Skycatch is building drones that will use machine learning to map sites, plan work, and even guide autonomous construction vehicles on building sites. Clear for takeoff: According to New Scientist, over 5,000 Japanese building sites have used Skycatch drones over the past three years to map construction sites. It takes the drones 15 minutes to scan a site and make a map of its terrain--a process that takes a team of humans several days. A flying foreman: The drones use AI that has been trained on data like labeled aerial YouTube footage depicting different kinds of industrial equipment. That enables them to study footage of a building site as they fly overhead, determine where vehicles are, and suggest how they should be moved.

At the event, Nvidia announced a partnership with Japan's Komatsu Ltd., one of the world's largest makers of construction and mining equipment. Nvidia GPUs will be embedded into heavy machinery to help the industry improve safety and increase productivity. One of the biggest problems in construction and mining is that large equipment moving around people leads to many accidents. In fact, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimated that more than 10,000 injuries occur annually because of construction vehicle and machine accidents, costing companies millions of dollars in lost productivity. According to the Japan Construction Occupational Safety and Health Association, there were more than 300 deaths and 15,000 injuries at construction sites in Japan last year alone.