John Deere Starts Farmerless Farming With Self-Driving Tractor

The world's largest agricultural machinery manufacturer Deere & Company is launching a fully autonomous tractor later this year.

Photo Insert: The State Office in Washington D.C., United States (placed in the photo)

"This is not a vision or a demo, but a finished product," John Deere technology chief Jahmy Hindman said on Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) tech fair in Las Vegas, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

The announcement comes after the US company acquired robotics startup Bear Flag Robotics, which specializes in automating farm work, in mid-2021. The tractor has six pairs of stereo cameras that provide an all-around view to detect obstacles. Information from the captured images is fed through a system inspired by the biological neural network used by the human brain.

"Each pixel is classified in about 100 milliseconds. The system then decides whether the machine continues or stops, depending on whether an obstacle is detected," Hindman said.

The artificial intelligence has been trained with more than 50 million images, he said. The tractor also constantly checks its position in relation to a pre-determined area of operation. This virtual fence ("geofence") is designed to ensure that the vehicle works where it is supposed to, with an accuracy of 2.5 cm.

According to the company, to use the tractor, farmers only have to bring it to the field and set it up. Then they can devote themselves to other tasks. The machine can also be monitored remotely via smartphone, tablet, or personal computer.

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