Autonomous Tractor - Future of Farming

Background

Tractor is that vehicle that plays vital role in farming. Driving a tractor in summer is not an easy task. Just like automated cars, now time is come where you will see fully automated tractors. With these tractors the job of farmers will be quite easy. John Deere introduced a self-driving tractor that one can control from his phone. John Deere is a farmer. He found the gap and filled that gap with a machine (tractor) that could not only steer itself but also did not need a farmer in the can for its operation. Total worth of tractor is 44,000 pounds. John Deere asked the engineers to test the operations of the tractor on his farm. Few days back, in the press conference of CES, John Deere’s fully automated tractor was introduced to the audience.

World is changing day by day with the help of new and innovative technologies. The automation is rising in every field. We can see that from car factories to Amazon Go convenience stores has sparked fear that the robots will wipe out many jobs of humans. With automation life gets easy but many individuals lose their jobs on the other hands.

 

John Deere’s journey to make fully automated tractor:

Although John Deere was not the first person who introduced the fully automated tractor to the world. He is world’s second maker of agriculture equipment and this automated tractor is one of them.

John Deere’s journey to autonomy began many years back. Before 2000, he introduced a satellite GPS system for tractors. Farmers used the GPS system for more precise and effective agriculture. The system was able to tell what is going on in the soil so that farmers would be able to plan according for gas, fertilizers, seeds.

 

Automation in farming:

Countries like Pakistan whose economy depends on agriculture can get many benefits from automated tractors. Automation may be the only and effective way to make sure that enough food is grown. It can make farmer’s life a lot easier. With the help of fully automated tractor by John Deere, farming can be done on time with high and effective level of quality.

John introduced the automated tractor with the help of CES company. They did not invent a new machine (automated tractor) but unveiled equipment that added to the popular 8R 410 tractor for full autonomy. It consists of 2 boxes, one on the front and other in the back with total 12 cameras and a GPU system. With the help of all these things, a farmer is able to control the machine from a smart phone.

 

The tech inside:

Many car companies that make automated cars use a depth sensor known as lidar. Similarly, the most popular electric car company, Tesla employs an array of cameras, sensors, and radar.

John Deere research on this technology and he noticed that stereo cameras are the way to get self-driving technology into many fields. John Deere’s autonomous machine has 12 such stereo cameras. In order to do what he wanted to, he mounts a single pod on the front side of tractor and one pod on the back side of tractor. Each pod consists of 3 pairs of stereo cameras that can work like human eye. He took various images by using both pods to locate the obstacles from 45 to 90 feet.

John Deere installed various ways to stop and manually control the tractor inside the system. It also includes the throttle and normal brakes for effective braking system. John Deere’s autonomy tractor can also be used manually for other tasks and operations. 

John Deere’s installed a very effective security system in the tractor. Chat between the farmer and the tractor through mobile phone is fully secured and end to end encrypted. The cameras and the GPS system must be present and on otherwise tractor will stop working.

Avoiding obstacles:

In early stages there were some troubles with the automated technology like with shadows, leaves, and dirt patches. John installed lights that are on all the time of operation and task and sort out the issue.

Reference:

https://www.deere.co.uk/en/agriculture/future-of-farming/