Deere Rolls Out Fully Autonomous Tractor at CES
A farmer monitors and manages the autonomous tractor from a mobile application that provides live video and continuous data on the machine’s operations.
By John McCormick
Wall Street Journal
Jan. 4, 2022
Excerpt:
“The move from conventional tractors to autonomous tractors is going to be comparable from the move from horses to the combustion engine,” he said.
Deere said its new 8R series tractor is designed for large-scale farming applications. The Moline, Ill., company, founded in 1837, is the largest U.S. farm equipment manufacturer by sales.
Deere has yet to set the tractor’s price.
The autonomous driving system is equipped with six pairs of cameras, three in the front and three in the rear that provide a 360-degree view of the tractor’s surroundings. The images are fed to the onboard computer, where a convolutional neural network—an advanced form of artificial intelligence that analyzes images—classifies pixels in milliseconds, identifies objects in the tractor’s path, and determines whether the tractor should remain on course, steer around an obstacle, or stop.
A farmer monitors and manages the autonomous tractor from a mobile application that provides live video and continuous data on the machine’s operations. Farmers have the option to drive the vehicle from the cab.
