Ground robots have moved off the test site and into daily work. Here are five areas where tracked and wheeled machines already do jobs people used to do, with places and numbers from 2026.
Sidewalk delivery. In Leeds and Sheffield, six-wheeled robots deliver food ordered through an app. The operator reports about 3,000 machines in more than 270 towns and cities; a typical delivery takes up to 30 minutes over a distance of up to three kilometers. In 2026 the service is expanding into other European markets.
Field work. Two field machines were unveiled in California in February. The first is a laser weeder: cameras find the weed and a laser kills it with no herbicide, for claimed savings of up to 80% on weed control. The second is a kit that turns an ordinary tractor into a driverless one: the machine follows its route by itself, and the operator can take over at any moment. In effect, a robotic platform takes on the work a compact tractor does on a small farm.
Quarries and mines. This is where the largest autonomous fleets are. In August 2026 the first batch of fully electric autonomous haul trucks shipped to South America. Another manufacturer shipped more than 1,900 autonomous haul trucks in the first half of 2026; they work at nearly 40 mines, seven of which run fleets of more than 100 machines, and the largest fleet numbers 220. The robots haul rock, push spoil on the dumps, load coal and feed it to the crusher. One manufacturer's autonomous trucks have logged more than 13 million km and moved more than 41 million cubic meters of rock.
Grounds maintenance. In September 2026, professional mowers for parks, campuses and large properties were introduced in Berlin. In the UK, robotic mowing is used by contractors, municipalities and property managers; solar farms are a niche of their own, with grass cut between the rows of panels. The machines hold their route by satellite, lidar and cameras to within centimeters, with no boundary wire around the perimeter. Working areas run from 8,000 to 28,000 square meters. In winter the same grounds are covered by a snow-removal robot: a tracked chassis with attachments clears the roads and paths.
Security and inspection. Near Melbourne, a four-legged robot walks the rounds at a plant and an industrial park. One machine covers two jobs: perimeter security, with intruder recognition and camera tracking, and equipment inspection, where photos are taken from the same spots every time so that frames can be compared from one round to the next. Recognition runs on board, so the round continues if the network goes down. In Taiwan, similar machines were shown in June for patrolling coastlines and islands.
What all these areas have in common. The work comes down to three things: carrying cargo along a known route, making regular rounds of a site, and observing with a record. It is monotonous, it is long, and it is done in conditions that are hard or dangerous for people.
What we do. VETER Robotics has work of its own in four of these five areas. The VETER TEGU tracked platform hauls the raspberry harvest along the rows of a berry farm - the same known-route transport as in field work abroad. For orchards we are training the Smotritel neural network, which analyzes footage from the robot's camera and separates crop from weed. The VETER SCINK tracked platform clears snow with a snow-removal attachment. The VETER AGAMA patrol robot for perimeter security is in development; for it we are building a detector that tells a person from an animal and spots a fire starting. A project in its own right is SARA OS, our operating system for ground robots: it controls the drives, interprets the surroundings and keeps the link to the operator's tablet.
Some of the figures from abroad come from manufacturers' own statements and have not been independently verified.
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