During a press conference at Consumer Electronics Show 2022 on Jan. 4, John Deere revealed a fully autonomous tractor that’s ready for large-scale production.
The new machine combines Deere’s 8R tractor, TruSet-enabled chisel plow, GPS guidance system, and new advanced technologies, says the company.
The autonomous tractor will be available to farmers later this year.
The tractor has six pairs of stereo cameras, which enable 360-degree obstacle detection and the calculation of distance. Images captured by the cameras pass through a “deep neural” network that classifies each pixel in approximately 100 milliseconds, and determines if the machine continues to move or if it stops, depending on if an obstacle is detected, the company says.
The tractor will also continuously check its position relative to a geofence, ensuring it is operating where it is supposed to, and is within less than an inch of accuracy.
Farmers will only need to transport the machine to a field to use the tractor and then configure it for autonomous operation. Using John Deere Operations Center Mobile, they can swipe from left to right to start the machine. While the machine is working, the farmer can leave the field to focus on other tasks, while monitoring the machine’s status from their mobile device, says Deere.
John Deere Operations Center Mobile provides access to live video, images, data and metrics, and allows a farmer to adjust speed, depth and more. Farmers will be notified remotely of any job quality anomalies or machine health issues and can make adjustments to optimize the performance of the machine.
