The Role of Robotics & Automation in Data Centre Delivery

As technology continues to evolve and place increased pressures on the data centre industry, it is ultimately changing how work is completed across multiple key industries.

Tools like AI, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT) are leading to companies unlocking new opportunities to optimise workflows, improving safety and driving growth within their sector. While the data centre industry is wrestling with sustainability concerns and power demands, companies like Trimble are starting to emerge to bridge the gap.

With this in mind, we hear from Trimble VP of Technology and Innovation, Aviad Algamor. He explains how the company is leveraging emerging technologies like AI, autonomous systems and augmented reality to optimise workflows and empower teams to embark upon a better connected future within the workplace.

Please introduce yourself and your role at Trimble.

As Vice President of Technology Innovation at Trimble, I lead a team dedicated to exploring and integrating breakthrough technologies into our digital ecosystem. 

Our goal is to discover and leverage technologies that can transform our customers’ workflows and enhance our internal processes, driving innovation and efficiency across the organization.

Trimble is a global technology company that bridges the physical and digital worlds to enhance how work is performed across construction, geospatial, transportation and agriculture. 

Trimble industry platforms integrate advanced technologies such as reality capture, positioning systems, 3D modeling, data analytics, autonomy and IoT to improve operational efficiency, productivity, quality and safety.

By offering these integrated solutions, Trimble plays a significant role in transforming workflows, enabling industry-wide optimisation, real-time collaboration and precise decision-making across essential industries worldwide.

How do you envision multimodal AI transforming industries? Are there any specific challenges you think it will help address?

Multimodal AI transforms user experience by enabling more natural, intuitive interactions beyond traditional text-based interfaces. 

The ability to bi-directionally interact with AI systems using text, voice, gestures, images and videos empowers professionals to effectively interpret and utilise reality capture data, converting complex raw inputs into actionable insights for critical areas such as safety analysis, productivity optimisation, and quality monitoring.

Integrating multimodal AI with augmented reality enhances spatial intelligence to strengthen situational awareness directly on-site and support real-time, data-driven decision-making.

Multimodal AI achieves its greatest impact when paired with agentic AI, which can leverage the diverse data inputs and interaction modes to gain a richer understanding of context and intent. 

This enhanced contextual awareness allows agentic AI systems to autonomously manage real-world constraints such as safety protocols, project timelines and resource availability.

This turns AI from supportive tools into proactive agents, capable of managing complex workflows and making informed decisions.

Tell us about the development and adoption of Trimble Assistant. What lessons has Trimble learned from integrating AI tools into its workforce and how do you see this shaping workplace dynamics in the future?

Trimble Assistant is our internally developed AI-powered solution designed specifically to address the unique needs of our workforce. 

In developing Trimble Assistant, we've been able to securely leverage confidential internal data, providing every Trimble employee with an AI-driven tool to enhance productivity, streamline daily tasks and support research activities. 

Its development has given us valuable insights into the capabilities and limitations of AI technologies, raising our team's awareness of AI's disruptive potential across various internal processes. 

This initiative has also accelerated the creation and refinement of AI-powered, customer-facing solutions.

The evolution of tools like Trimble Assistant towards more advanced agentic workflows and multi-agent environments will be a step towards a future in which hybrid teams of human and AI agents will become standard, with AI handling routine and repetitive tasks and humans focusing on strategic, creative and higher-level decision-making. 

This would allow organisations to scale operations efficiently without proportionally increasing human resources.

With the growing demand for data centres, what role do you see robotics and automation playing in streamlining their construction?

Data centres represent a unique class of industrialised structures characterised by precision-driven execution and inherent complexity. 

Given that their design and engineering emphasise efficiency and accuracy, they are an ideal application for prefabrication and automation technologies.

Robotics and automation play a crucial role in streamlining data centre construction by reducing errors, enhancing consistency and accelerating project timelines. 

Trimble actively addresses these requirements through its comprehensive suite of hardware and software solutions, including industry-leading platforms, advanced positioning and surveying tools, reality capture technologies, machine control systems and autonomy features. 

Additionally, our fabrication-level 3D modeling solutions, integrated project management tools and sophisticated supply chain and construction management systems combine to offer an end-to-end solution to the demands of data centre projects.

Trimble leverages AI and augmented reality capabilities to enhance decision-making and support the design, construction and maintenance processes, thus ensuring precision execution and substantial efficiency gains throughout the entire construction lifecycle.

How is Trimble leveraging emerging technologies to promote sustainability across industries?

Trimble’s approach to sustainability is that better data drives better planning, higher efficiency and fewer errors, ultimately reducing waste, fuel consumption and unnecessary site visits. 

This philosophy is materialised using Trimble technology across every phase of a project’s lifecycle — from initial site scanning and groundwork, through design, structural and MEP engineering, construction management solutions, precise machine control, to the final handover of the as-built model. 

Our solutions help teams minimise rework and make informed, sustainable decisions.

A project showing the effects of Trimble’s approach is RiverRestoration’s effort to map 342 miles of the Colorado River to support the US Bureau of Reclamation’s conservation efforts.

The river, vital for irrigating 90% of US winter crops, is one of the country’s most endangered rivers. 

Using Trimble tools, RiverRestoration created a seamless, accurate 3D map significantly faster than traditional methods, enabling the Bureau to assess the impacts of erosion and manage water capacity more effectively.

What are your thoughts on how technologies like AI, robotics and IoT will reshape infrastructure development over the next decade? How is Trimble positioning itself to lead in this transformation?

Our view on the role of emerging technologies emphasises their convergence and synergy rather than focusing on any single technology. 

This integration is where the real transformation in infrastructure development will occur — in a seamlessly connected digital-to-physical environment with integrated multi-agent workflows bridging the office and the field, as well as hardware and software.

We envision sites where all machinery functions as IoT sensors, continuously gathering data that is processed both at the edge and in the cloud. 

This data drives autonomous machinery and orchestrates a swarm of collaborative robots — known as cobots — working alongside the human workforce. 

This new ecosystem will include entirely new user experiences, characterised by multimodal interactions and hybrid teams of humans, robots, and AI agents working in harmony.

Trimble is actively exploring these integrated technologies, taking a comprehensive, system-level approach to driving transformation across the industries we serve.

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