Xpanner launches X1 Piling R6, a one-operator autonomous pile driver for solar farms
Construction-automation company Xpanner announced the X1 Piling R6 on Oct 27, a pile driver that travels, aligns, hammers and corrects plumb automatically under one operator's supervision, for utility-scale solar and battery-storage sites.
It pairs Everstar's pile-driving machine with Xpanner's X1 automation, handles piles up to 23 ft, and is sold as hardware plus a monthly software subscription, the company said.
Xpanner has launched the X1 Piling R6, an automated pile driver for utility-scale solar and battery energy storage (BESS) projects, the Santa Fe Springs, California, company said on Oct 27 in an announcement carried by The Robot Report and on its product page. The machine combines Everstar's crawler pile driver with Xpanner's X1 automation: after the operator loads a pile plan, a single press on the remote control starts a sequence of travel, alignment, hammering and automatic plumb control, guided by high-precision GNSS and onboard sensors, while the operator supervises.
According to the product page, the R6 drives piles up to 23 ft long to a maximum depth of 15.7 ft, can shift the hammer 11.8 in forward or back to avoid repositioning the tracks, and folds its mast for transport without removal. Each pile's position, depth and plumb are logged to Xpanner Connect, a web dashboard that replaces manual counts. Customers buy or rent the machine and pay a monthly subscription per automation feature; Xpanner installs, calibrates and trains operators, and the contractor supplies the operator. Chief executive Henri Lee said the system brings the automation already used on the PD10 to a more powerful machine. Price and delivery dates were not given.
MEKAWIRE context: construction autonomy is drawing capital this week. Bedrock Robotics raised a USD 600 million Series C for autonomous excavators on Oct 26, the largest construction-robotics round in our database. Xpanner works a narrower, repetitive task, solar piling, where its site says it has run on more than 60 job sites. Its management comes from Bobcat, Hyundai Infracore and Volvo Construction Equipment.