John Deere Hits CES With Autonomous Tractor Said to Make Farming More Efficient
In the far reaches of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s South Hall Platinum Lot, John Deere gave tractor rides at CES -- but not the type associated with an autumn hayride. The GPS-enabled 8370R gave us a 2-mile-per-hour autonomous ride,…
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handling an S-curve pattern in a makeshift field to show how machine-guided driving could help save farmers time and costly mistakes. Test Farm Manager Marcus Hill steered the $350,000 tractor along the test pattern first, asking us to “imagine you’re in a cornfield,” saying “with these wide tires, there’s not a lot of room for error.” Hill touched course markers representing corn stalks a couple of times -- “lost profit and lost food.” In auto-track mode, the tractor relied on sensors, cameras and GPS to keep it on track. Deere engineers drove the course first to create a path for the tractor to follow on its own, something a farmer would do to map the outside of his fields, including any obstacles such as trees or waterways, Hill said. Farmers can program the tractor to not drop seeds or nutrients in an irrigation ditch, for example, where they would be wasted. A main head-up display, one of three displays in the cab, provided guidance and machine data, diagnostics and an XM Radio satellite radio receiver, while a cellular phone took data from a Bluetooth connection and then sent it to an operations center, he said. The tractor’s smarts -- artificial intelligence it added through Deere’s acquisition of Blue River Technology in 2017 -- can identify the difference between a weed and a crop plant, resulting in cost savings and safety for the crop, a type of “facial recognition for plants,” Willy Pell, director-new technology, told us. The “see-and-spray” technology, in development for two years, is due on the market in two years.