John Deere’s self-driving tractors debate AI in agriculture

Deere & Co. helped mechanize agriculture in 1837 with the first commercially successful steel plow. On Tuesday, the company unveiled a machine that could prove transformative: a fully automated tractor.

John Deere’s new 8R tractor uses six pairs of stereo and enhanced cameras artificial intelligence to perceive its environment and navigate. It can find its way to a field on its own when given a route and coordinates, and then plow or sow seeds without instructions, avoiding obstacles as it goes. Farmers can feed the machine with new orders using a smartphone app.

Some tractors already operate automatically, but only in limited situations — following a GPS-defined route, for example, without the ability to navigate around obstacles. Others feature limited autonomy that still requires a farmer behind the wheel.

Jahmy Hindman, Deere’s chief technology officer, of the new machine, revealed in 2022: “It’s a dramatic change. Electronic consumer display in Las Vegas. “I think it’s just as big as the transition from horse to tractor.”

Self-driving tractors that can save farmers money and automate jobs are threatened by There is an ongoing shortage of agricultural workers. But automating more farming, and adding AI, could also stir up debate around worker displacement and the ownership and use of the data it generates.

Deere did not say how much the new tractor would cost; Its current most expensive models can run up to $800,000. Hindman said the company is exploring several possible models, including subscription plans.

Autonomy has crept into tractors and other farm equipment for decades, with recent advances builds on advances made in robotics and self-driving cars.

8R is completely autonomous to rely on Neural Network Algorithm to understand the information passed into its camera. Deere has been collecting and annotating the data needed to train these algorithms for several years, Hindman said.

A similar AI approach is being used by construction companies self-driving car. Tesla, for example, collects data through the cars used to hone Autopilot self-driving system. And while an empty field poses less of a challenge than a busy city intersection, Hindman admits that, as with self-driving cars, the system could have Difficulty seeing surroundings in extreme weather conditions such as snow or rain.

Qin Zhang, director of the Center for Automated & Precision Agricultural Systems at Washington State University, who previously worked on a prototype automatic tractor with Deere funding, said the technical problems appeared to be as has been largely resolved. But he says some farmers may find the system too expensive or too difficult to program.

Deere has incorporated more AI and autonomy into its products over the past decade. In August, the company said it paid $250 million to buy Bear Flag Robotics, a startup that retrofits tractors to make them more autonomous. In 2017, it paid $305 million to buy Blue River Technology, which makes the robots capable of identifying and removing unwanted crops using a highly precise blast of herbicide.

The new 8R tractor perhaps heralds a larger shift in Deere’s ambitions. It doesn’t just turn the company’s most iconic product into a capable one robot; it also provides an ethical cycle for training new AI algorithms and developing new products.