JLG Industries, Inc., an Oshkosh Corporation business based in McConnellsburg, Penn., has spent more than 55 years focused on advancing the access industry. It recently demonstrated that commitment at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2026 in Las Vegas, Nev., with its “Job Site of the Future” concept – and has plans for a repeat at ConExpo-Con/Agg 2026 (Booth N12308) in March.
At CES 2026, JLG showed micro-sized scissor lifts with leader-follower technology synchronously placing an I-beam into position. (Photo: JLG Industries)As the company noted, today’s construction jobsites are dynamic, unpredictable and inherently complex, with most operations still manual and disconnected. JLG said it seeks to transform jobsites “through an intelligent ecosystem that connects people, equipment, tools and materials to help address customer challenges.”
“The folks out there that are doing the work, whether it be managing fleets or out in the field building a multitude of things – data centers, LNG projects, apartment building, hospitals, whatever it is – that work is really, really hard,” said Brent Miller, vice president at JLG Industries. “We’re laser focused on trying to make it easier, to make all of these jobsites more productive and [to ensure] everyone gets home safe at night.”
Traditionally, JLG’s function has been to enable workers to perform a task, Miller said. “Now we’re going from enabling that work to executing that work, which is what we started to introduce at CES.”
Technology journey
The technologies that JLG is showcasing are the culmination of years of work, Miller stated, which included the development of tech stacks – interfacing technologies that can be combined to “produce something greater than the sum of the parts, whether that’s obstacle detection, camera systems or our telematics solutions.”
“When you bring all these technologies together and you let them work together, all of a sudden you can do some great things,” he commented. “So, that’s a journey that we’ve been on for over a decade, and we’re just now starting to display some of the fruits of that labor.”
JLG’s ClearSky Smart Fleet management solution has proven an important element of that journey. “That solution has a bunch of different components; it’s not just the traditional satellite and telemetry,” Miller pointed out. “It enables us to create mesh networks to let machines start to talk to each other – to take some of these tech stacks we’ve built and have them do the work of talking amongst each other.”
JLG’s ClearSky Smart Fleet management solution is being used to enable machine to machine communication. (Photo: JLG Industries)Strategic partnerships and acquisitions in some cases have and will continue to help accelerate tech development. “We’re not afraid to help folks along that technology journey and invest in some companies and partner with others out in the open market,” said Miller. “We have a group that is always looking for those avenues and trying to make partnerships within the broader tech community.”
One such relationship began six years ago when Canvas, a San Francisco-based construction robotics company, selected a JLG scissor lift platform as the base to develop a robotic drywall finishing system. The collaboration eventually led to JLG’s acquisition of the core technology developed by Canvas in January 2026.
With the acquisition, JLG said the Canvas team will help it develop new robotic and autonomous solutions by advancing robotic end-effector capabilities and autonomy and enabling pairing with JLG access equipment.
“[The Canvas team] has been on this journey to develop this technology for a number of years, and I think that’s the opportunity,” said Miller. “They have experience in solving some of these more complex problems, and they have a lot of real-world experience in how hard it can be to execute some of these solutions. We’re really excited to leverage the work that they’ve done.”
Tech stack in action
At CES, JLG featured two examples of how it is putting its tech stack development to work.
The first demonstrated how micro-sized scissor lifts with leader-follower technology can be used to enable a lead machine to guide multiple follower scissor lifts to autonomously move equipment and materials across a jobsite. In the example, two lifts were being used to synchronously move and lift an I-beam into position.
“We had those scissors talk to one another via our ClearSky Smart Fleet telematics solution, and they were able to sense the position at height that the beam needed placed,” Miller explained. “They were able to raise it, coordinate with one another to maintain level on that beam and then place that beam at height.”
Boom lifts such as the EC600AJ+ can be equipped with an end-effector system and tools to perform autonomous tasks at heights up to 30 meters. (Photo: JLG Industries)Once the beam was in place, ClearSky Smart Fleet notified a nearby lift – the next-generation EC600AJ+ electric articulated boom lift – equipped with end-effector system and autonomous welder that the I-beam was ready for welding.
“That welder sensed the position that needed welded and moved into place, placed welds on either end of the beam and then retracted,” said Miller. “So, it’s all those pieces of the puzzle working together, talking to one another and doing a job at height.”
An end-effector can be equipped with a selection of autonomous tools to perform repetitive tasks such as welding, painting, ductwork or material handling without requiring an operator to work at height.
“We’re able to use our 60-ft. or 80-ft. boom lift, or whatever it may be, to complete a task. Currently, [with] some of these robotic arms, you might get one that is 2 to 3 meters – that’s kind of standard in the industry,” Miller pointed out. “We’re talking on a scale that is much, much larger than that. We’re talking 20 meters, 30 meters – so much bigger applications. [It gives] you a wider range of options to complete some of this work at height and to use our machines in a way that I don’t know that anybody thought they could before.”
What’s ahead
In demonstrating the “jobsite of the future” at both CES and ConExpo, JLG is seeking feedback on the solutions shown, as well as to gauge interest from its rental partners and construction companies on “what the possibilities are and what would make their lives easier,” said Miller.
“I was on a jobsite… watching an electrician work, and there was another electrician that was ferrying materials to him across the large data center site,” Miller related. “The feedback from the general contractor was, ‘Man, if we could find a way to have material just arrive instead of having our valuable skilled labor fetching materials from across the jobsite at a yard – if we could just figure out how to solve that problem, that would be huge for us.’
“There’s no reason that some of our tech stack couldn’t be used to solve that, and we’re trying those technologies,” Miller stated, noting JLG is actively testing certain technologies with partners in the field.
“We’re excited about exploring a lot of those problems,” he added, “and figuring out how we can use these technologies that we’ve developed to solve them.”
