John Deere unveiled its first fully autonomous tractor at CES 2022 today, building on 20 years of AI development – and it’s not a concept. The self-propelled John Deere is already in use on selected farms and is for sale.
The new autonomous product is based on the John Deere 8R tractor and features a TruSet-enabled chisel plow, GPS guidance system and other advanced technologies, including six pairs of stereo cameras that enable 360-degree obstacle detection and distance calculation. The images captured by the cameras are passed through a deep neural network that classifies each pixel in around 100 milliseconds and determines whether the machine continues to move or stops, depending on whether an obstacle is detected. In addition, John Deere executives said that the same neural network could quickly distinguish between “weeds” and “plants” by selecting certain plants to remove and leaving others to grow. (Note: I used quotation marks for “weeds” because a rose is a weed in the corn field, you know?)
The stated goal of the new John Deere tractor is to help farmers “do more with less”. At the press conference, company representatives discussed how future farmers will feed a growing world population with fewer farm workers and less available arable land while reducing emissions. This tractor, they say, is a product that can do just that.
Intelligent “see and spray” tractor powered by AI, courtesy of John Deere.
That was a long time coming.
John Deere has bought out a number of tech companies in recent years, from acquiring AI startup Blue River in 2017 to buying electric battery maker Kreisler Electric late last year. These acquisitions helped the tractor company develop a first autonomous prototype that became a production model, which was first put into operation a few years ago on farmer Doug Nimz’s farm in Minnesota.
“It takes a while before you feel good because … you are amazed when you just look at it,” Nimz told c | net. Nimz described himself as “very, very interested” but also “a little suspicious” of autonomous technology before using the John Deere machine on his farm. “When I actually saw it drive … I said, ‘Well, goll’ [sic], this is really going to happen. That will really work. ‘”
This tractor is “[a] Ability to get the job done on time and with high quality every time “, Jahmy Hindman, Deere & Co.’s chief technology officer, said. “It’s been 20 years in the making.” And, as several company representatives emphasized in the press conference, this is a safeguard against losses due to labor shortages (i.e. farmers no longer have to pay people).
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The average farmer in the United States is over 55 years old, and John Deere finds that fewer and fewer people are choosing to get into farming as demand continues to grow. As John Deere continues to advance its autonomous vehicle programs, so will its reliance on larger, more powerful electrical systems to power those systems.
In fact, the trend towards automation is also cited as one of the driving forces behind the industry’s appetite for electrification. As recently as 2020, Ford told Wired that “Tests show that more than 50% of the range of a battery electric vehicle depends on the computing power required by self-driving software, as well as the air conditioning and entertainment systems required to keep passengers hold, would be sucked up “. cozy. “With a tractor? On a farm? Speed is not important, torque is, and an electric tractor can not only work longer in the most efficient low speed range, but also has to travel a relatively short distance to return to its” home “and recharge or replace his batteries, at this point it’s not miles but hours – and that’s something John Deere’s latest acquisition knows a lot about.
This launch is a letter of intent from John Deere. They are becoming autonomous now, and they do so on the back of advanced batteries that they paid good money for not to share. Expect good things when you spend more than $ 500,000 to order one.
In the meantime, you can watch the full John Deere CES 2022 press conference for yourself below and let us know what you think about the John Deere Autonomous Tractor in the comments.
John Deere CES 2022 press conference.
Source | photos: c | net; John Deere, via PR Newswire.
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