NEWS BRIEFS: JOHN DEERE AUTONOMOUS TRACTOR
John Deere Unveils Fully Autonomous Tractor
ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF JOHN DEERE
Adding full autonomy to the John Deere 8R tractor enables farmers to be more productive and better equipped to feed a growing global population. by Sara Jensen
Use of the fully autonomous 8R tractor can help farmers overcome labor challenges and remain productive.
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t CES 2022, John Deere unveiled its fully autonomous 8R tractor. The company said the machine is ready for large-scale production and will be available for customers later in 2022. Joseph Liefer, Senior Product Manager for Autonomy, John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group, says the company built upon the technologies it already had in the market to develop the autonomous machine. “We’re building on the shoulders of giants. We started with a production 8R that was nearly autonomous ready [as well as] our precision ag components [such as] our Starfire receivers and our GPS network that farmers have been leveraging for 20 years,” he explains. “We had a great base to start from.” Liefer says John Deere became serious about bringing in-field autonomy
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to the farm in late 2018. It created a team to tackle the many challenges associated with doing so, the largest of which is perception. Perceiving the environment around the tractor and finding any possible exceptions is key to ensure safe operation. By weaving together close to 70 of the company’s precision agriculture products—such as auto track and auto track turn automation—into a single seamless experience, as well as the addition of some new technology, Liefer says John Deere was able to create the autonomous tractor.
Leveraging new and existing technology makes autonomy possible John Deere has spent the last couple of years working with farmers to get field images so it could train the neural
OEM Off-Highway | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
Farmers can remotely monitor and set parameters for the autonomous 8R tractor using a mobile device.
network of the autonomous system to recognize navigable terrain. Doing so enables the system to understand what a farm field looks like as well as any exceptions that might exist. During this process the company had to determine what sensors to utilize to ensure accurate sensing and data collection. It selected stereo cameras because of their ability to predict depth while bringing a low-cost solution to the market, says Liefer. Six pairs of stereo cameras are included on the autonomous 8R tractor which can provide a 360-degree view around the machine and aid with obstacle detection. The cameras are one of the new pieces of technology mounted onto the 8R to enable autonomous opera-
