The Grande 44 is Burro’s strongest autonomous robot yet, and the first one specifically designed for heavy industry. Source: Burro
Physical AI is making field robots more capable than ever. Burro has just introduced the Grande 44, a powerful new robot with 44 horsepower, a towing capacity of 6,000 pounds (2,721.5 kg), and the ability to work both indoors and outdoors. The company says this platform delivers proven autonomy to industrial tasks that standard warehouse robots simply can’t handle.
“Robots have mostly been limited to warehouses and factories,” said Charlie Andersen, co-founder and CEO of Burro. “Very few companies have managed to scale autonomous systems for outdoor use — in agriculture, construction, and now heavy industry — where trillions of dollars are spent on labor each year.”
“Every hour of operation, every mile, and every unpredictable condition we’ve faced in the field has made our platform smarter and more dependable,” he added. “The Grande 44 is the result of all that experience, now built specifically for the industrial world.”
Founded in 2017, Burro is a top provider of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) designed for outdoor work. Based in Philadelphia, the company builds field robots that use AI and computer vision to carry out a wide range of tasks in tough, unpredictable real-world settings.
Burro exhibited at last month’s Robotics Summit & Expo and has deployed more than 750 robots, logging over 1 million hours of autonomous operation across the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., Israel, and Latin America.
Burro takes autonomy outdoors
Burro says the Grande 44 represents a major step forward. The company is applying lessons learned from more than 200,000 miles (321,868 km) of real-world operation in agriculture, nurseries, and logistics to a system built for the harshest industrial environments, including intermodal and depot yards, airports, rail yards, automotive logistics, and large facility campuses.
Traditional AMRs and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are designed for smooth warehouse floors and rely on magnetic tape, reflectors, and consistent lighting, according to Burro. The Grande 44, on the other hand, is built to move seamlessly from indoor facilities to outdoor yards. It can handle gravel, slopes, dust, mud, and changing weather conditions without any infrastructure changes or operational downtime.
Burro said its new platform supports a variety of industrial workflows:
- Industrial towing and transport: The Grande 44 works as a decentralized autonomous conveyor, hauling heavy loads straight to assembly lines or across facility campuses. Spreading tasks across a fleet keeps operations running smoothly even when individual units are recharging.
- Scouting and patrolling: Fitted with sensors and RFID readers, Grande 44 units can autonomously patrol large yards to track assets in real time, cutting fuel costs and reducing the need for manual audits.
- Autonomous payload carrying: The solid steel cargo tray supports up to 1,500 pounds (680.3 kg), making it ideal for transporting assets across facility campuses.
- Vegetation management: The Grande 44 is compatible with the Cortador autonomous mower and Sprayito selective spot sprayer attachments, making it suitable for sites that require large-scale grounds maintenance.
Submit your session idea for the 2026 RoboBusinessGrande 44 is built on real-world data
Burro explained that the Grande 44’s AI is trained on millions of environmental scenes captured every day. The company uses images of people, terrain, weather, obstacles, and lighting to build a proprietary dataset that drives continuous improvement across its entire fleet.
That real-world experience carries over directly to industrial deployments, according to Burro. The same platform that has operated through tropical storms in Florida, freezing winters in the Northeast, and scorching Texas summers is now purpose-built for the gravel yards, loading docks, and heavy-traffic areas of industrial operations.
Like Burro’s other systems, the Grande 44 is designed to work alongside people. “Rather than replacing workers, it takes on the repetitive, physically demanding transport tasks that slow down operations and overburden understaffed crews, freeing skilled workers to focus on higher-value work,” the company said.
“The only way labor-intensive industries will remain viable long-term in the U.S. is by boosting productivity per employee with automation, AI, and other technologies,” Andersen said. “We’ve proven the platform can handle anything the outdoor world throws at it. The Grande 44 shows that the same technology can now meet the demands of the industrial world.”
Burro to showcase Grande 44 at Automate 2026
The Grande 44 will be on display at Booth 25064 at Automate in Chicago next week. Burro said its automation engineers will be on hand to discuss specific operational challenges and workflows.
The company will also run live demonstrations in Booth 24040 in the Automate AMR Demo Area, giving attendees a firsthand look at how the platform handles real-world indoor and outdoor conditions.
Attendees who want to see how the Grande 44 would perform in their own facility can book an on-site demo. The Grande 44 is available for pre-order now, with the first units expected to ship in the second half of this year.
