Deere & Co. said Tuesday that it has developed a fully autonomous tractor designed for large-scale farming and that it plans to sell the machine later this year.
The vehicle has the familiar green hue of a John Deere tractor. It sports a steering wheel in the cab, massive tires around classic yellow wheels, and a convolutional neural network, which comes standard in the autonomous tractor. It also features redundant braking and steering systems for an added layer of safety.
The autonomous tractor is a version of Deere’s existing 8R series machine, the largest of which has 410 horsepower. Current 8R users can upgrade their tractors with the autonomous driving system.
The Deere tractor, unveiled at the CES 2022 tech conference in Las Vegas, isn’t the world’s first autonomous tractor. Smaller autonomous tractors are being used in specialty-crop farms.
The application of the technology to larger vehicles is just getting started and promises to be highly consequential, according to Aron Cory, research manager for world-wide agriculture at International Data Corp.
“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.
Deere’s autonomous tractor has six pairs of cameras for a 360-degree view of its surroundings
Farm-equipment manufacturers, including several startups such as Monarch Tractor and Carbon Autonomous Robotic Systems Inc., have been working for years on driverless tractors and other autonomous machines for tasks such as planting, harvesting and weeding.
Monarch Tractor makes self-driving electric tractors with 40-70 horsepower engines. The tractors are being used at vineyards, orchards and other farms.