John Deere Goes Autonomous

It’s the traditional green, but something is missing – and it’s the driver in the tractor seat of the new John Deere autonomous tractor.

Farmers struggling with labor shortages will soon have the aid of autonomous assistance, with the world’s number two tractor maker John Deere set for the commercial launch of its first autonomous tractor later this year.

The 44,000-pound machine has been in development for four years and upgrades John Deere’s 8R model with a system of cameras to make the vehicle autonomous.

John Deere uses a system of pods that mount pairs of cameras — 12 cameras in all — which work like human eyes, collecting images to identify obstacles up to 30 meters away. 

A farmer can pre-program the tractor to either go around obstacles or shut down and send an alert. They also have driver-like control of the tractor through an Apple iPhone or iPad app that runs on iOS 11 or higher. Deere plans to release an Android app in the future.

The cameras also collect information on the state of the crops and other business metrics.

Initially, John Deere is tackling the ‘low hanging fruit’ of tilling, one of the simplest farming tasks for row crops such as corn or soybeans, but the idea is to make time for farmers to deal with other tasks in the absence of farmworkers.

"Right now, we're focused on row crops. That's John Deere's bread and butter," said Willy Pell, vice president of autonomy at John Deere.

The company began developing the autonomous tractor in 2017 after acquiring AI startup Blue River Technology. It also acquired autonomous tractor startup Bear Flag Robotics in 2021. 

The estimated price of the tractors is between USD500,000 and USD600,000. The price, and the fact that connectivity is the critical enabler of the technology, mean that in the short term, at least the tractors could be largely a developed world product.

Image credit: iStockphoto/saverio blasi