John Deere unveils fully autonomous tractor
In the British TV documentary series Clarkson's Farm, which aired in 2021, viewers watched the antics of journalist and presenter Jeremy Clarkson.
Shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Clarkson decided to take a break from the popular show Top Gear and take up farming on his 1,000-acre property in Oxfordshire (England). In the series, viewers saw how difficult modern agriculture can be for a single owner/operator.
Clarkson struggled to learn all the operations of tilling, planting, spraying and harvesting over the growing season. If the journalist had been able to use the new autonomous John Deere 8R tractor, rather than the Lamborghini R8 tractor he bought for the farm, he might have had an easier first farming season.
At CES 2022, John Deere unveiled a fully autonomous tractor ready for mass production. The machine combines the Deere 8R tractor, a TruSet-enabled plow, GPS navigation system and new advanced technologies. The autonomous tractor will be available to farmers at the end of 2022.
The new 8R tractor is fully autonomous and can be operated and monitored from a smartphone. The unit has six pairs of stereo cameras that allow it to detect obstacles with 360-degree visibility and calculate distances.
Images captured by the cameras are passed through a deep neural network that classifies each pixel in about 100 milliseconds and determines whether the machine keeps moving or stops, depending on whether an obstacle is detected. The autonomous tractor also constantly checks its position relative to a geofence, ensuring it works where it should, and has an accuracy of less than 2.5 cm.
On Clarkson's farm, viewers saw how hard it is to plant straight rows, and why farmers take pride in showing their skill. The John Deere 8R solves this problem with high positioning accuracy and obstacle avoidance. With the 8R, Clarkson would have impressed all his neighboring farmers with his perfectly straight rows. The autonomous 8R tractor can prepare 325 acres of land in 24 hours.
To use the autonomous 8R tractor, farmers only need to deliver the machine to the field and set it up for autonomous operation. Using John Deere Operations Center Mobile, they can swipe left to right to start the machine. While the tractor works, the farmer can leave the field to focus on other tasks, monitoring the machine's status from their mobile device. The tractors use 4G/5G cellular connectivity for remote monitoring of operations.
Another new feature announced at CES 2022 is John Deere See and Spray. This is an autonomous spraying device that uses machine vision and AI to identify crops and weeds. The See and Spray device then sprays weed killer only on individual weeds in the field. This helps reduce the total amount of chemicals used over the season, saving the farmer money, as well as reducing excessive spraying and crop damage.
In one funny episode of Clarkson's Farm, viewers watched Jeremy forget exactly where he had sprayed chemicals in the field, and in the end it turned out that large strips of weeds were growing between the crop rows. Clarkson will definitely benefit from John Deere's new See and Spray technology.
“The world's population is expected to grow from about 8 billion to nearly 10 billion people by 2050, leading to a 50% increase in global demand for food. Farmers also have to deal with variables such as changing weather conditions, changing soil quality, and the fight against weeds and pests, all of which affect the ability to farm during critical periods of the year”
The John Deere 8R tractor is built on autonomous driving technology that John Deere acquired from Blue River Technology. Development and field testing took more than four years, which led to general availability. The autonomous package is installed by a dealer and can be applied to any 8R tractor, starting with 2020 models.
John Deere also acquired Silicon Valley robotics company Bear Flag in 2021, so it now has more than 200 employees in Northern California. These investments are now evident thanks to the general availability of two new technologies introduced at CES 2022.
According to George Haero, John Deere's vice president of automation and autonomy and former CEO of Blue River Technology, the company will continue to automate other farm operations, including planting and harvesting. In addition, the company continues to roll out ADAS-like features for existing operations and equipment that help farmers perform tasks better from the cab. This helps improve accuracy and reduce fatigue even in semi-autonomous operations.
John Deere also continues to help farmers collect data about their daily operations, and then support decisions on how best to manage their operations.
