John Deere Thinks Driverless Tractors Are the Answer To Labor Shortages (qz.com) 120
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: John Deere is going all in on autonomous tractors. The company, which first introduced a driverless vehicle in 2022, said self-driving machines will revolutionize the field and address labor shortages. It will soon be selling self-driving dump trucks, more driverless tractors, and a robot lawn mower. "When we talk about autonomy, we mean full autonomy," Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, said at CES on Monday, according to The Verge. "No one's in the machine."
Hindman said the company wants "more of our machines to safely run autonomously in these unique and complex environments that our customers work in every day." John Deere says many farmers in the states currently utilize the first model of its driverless tractor, The Verge reported. "Those tractors are already being used by farmers to prepare the soil for planting in the next year," Hindman said. By 2030, the company is hoping to sell a fully self-driving corn and soybean farming system.
Between now and then, John Deere says its articulated dump truck will hit the market. That vehicle can carry more than 92,000 pounds at a time, The Verge reported, and the company says it will improve safety and productivity in sites like quarries. "It's unsupervised, it's capable of making decisions and operating safely on its own," Maya Sripadam, senior product manager of John Deere's subsidiary Blue River Technology, said. John Deere also plans to release driverless tractors that can spray nut orchards with pesticides, growth regulators, and nutrients for the trees. It thinks those vehicles will have a particular benefit to the California nut farming industry, which has faced labor shortages. [...] John Deere hasn't said how much the vehicles will cost. Further reading: Software Fees To Make Up 10% of John Deere's Revenues By 2030
Hindman said the company wants "more of our machines to safely run autonomously in these unique and complex environments that our customers work in every day." John Deere says many farmers in the states currently utilize the first model of its driverless tractor, The Verge reported. "Those tractors are already being used by farmers to prepare the soil for planting in the next year," Hindman said. By 2030, the company is hoping to sell a fully self-driving corn and soybean farming system.
Between now and then, John Deere says its articulated dump truck will hit the market. That vehicle can carry more than 92,000 pounds at a time, The Verge reported, and the company says it will improve safety and productivity in sites like quarries. "It's unsupervised, it's capable of making decisions and operating safely on its own," Maya Sripadam, senior product manager of John Deere's subsidiary Blue River Technology, said. John Deere also plans to release driverless tractors that can spray nut orchards with pesticides, growth regulators, and nutrients for the trees. It thinks those vehicles will have a particular benefit to the California nut farming industry, which has faced labor shortages. [...] John Deere hasn't said how much the vehicles will cost. Further reading: Software Fees To Make Up 10% of John Deere's Revenues By 2030
Good for farms (Score:2)
I thought GPS-guided tractors were already widely deployed. Any area you can fence off from unauthorized humans seems like a much better place for early autonomous machinery than, say, the streets of our cities. With a solidly trustworthy kill switch if they leave the approved zone of operation, self-driving farm tractors should have been a thing even before computers were good enough to do it with GPS and machine vision... they could have been following buried wire between rows of crops.
Years (Score:5, Informative)
Automatic harvesters have been around for years. The drivers get them to the start of the field pattern, hit auto, then listen to music while making sure it doesn't hit anything that shouldn't be in the field.
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Human element is the worst part. It's what makes mistakes and needs breaks. Without it, those things could potentially run 24/7.
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This has nothing to do with self driving. Driving a combine/tractor over a field is a function of optimal coverage of the field with equipment you have. I.e. it completely lacks the problem that self-driving runs into (unknown or poorly known road situation), and the main problem is actually accuracy of driving. To spray correctly, you need accuracy within centimeters, preferably millimeters across multi-kilometer long pre-planned driving route. It's why Big Ag moved away from GPS a while ago for this work.
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Get rid of the safety driver who spends most of his time jacking off in the cockpit. The rest of the time is spend moving the combine/tractor between the fields and setting it up on the starting point and hitting "go" button.
It also means that owner can do something else while tractor is executing. Including jacking off in comfort of his own home rather than in the cockpit.
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It's why Big Ag moved away from GPS a while ago for this work.
That depends on what you mean by GPS. Agriculture and other uses that need precise locations down to one centimeter use additional technologies to "correct" the gps location and make it accurate. Essentially you have a base unit set at a precise location that provides correction of the gps signal to the mobile unit.
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I mean the satellite positioning system formerly known as NavStar. And no, they do not use it. They use their own satellites, launched specifically to provide exceptionally accurate satellite navigation.
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And the human element is key,
Key to what? There isn't much in a giant field of corn to hit. From what I've gathered, it's mostly large dead animals, and idiots who drive their trucks into fields to illegally hunt. No human is accidentally getting hit by a harvester. They are loud, the size of a small house, and you can outrun one at a medium-paced jog.
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Fun idea is to have some external entity hack the tractors, plow under most of the crops.
Yeay, famine.
People forget the security element of having humans in the loop way to often.
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I think they made a movie about that with Matthew Broderick
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Fun idea is to have some external entity hack the tractors, plow under most of the crops.
Yeay, famine.
https://xkcd.com/1958/ [xkcd.com]
You and I have very different ideas of fun.
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The hypothetical in the xkcd comic is about real life, in-person action. If all the cases of Swatting in recent years have taught us anything, it's that people can be absolute monsters (up to and including the point of facilitating a murder) when they're on the internet and think they're anonymous.
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Not to mention state sponsored attacks. If APT's have no issue bringing down hospitals for money why would they care about destroying crops for money? They just want the money and to disrupt the US.
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If all the cases of Swatting in recent years have taught us anything, it's that people can be absolute monsters (up to and including the point of facilitating a murder) when they're on the internet and think they're anonymous.
AKA the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (GIFT) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The human is the most expensive part. It slows down production, needs piss brakes, etc. why do you want a human there?
Normally I would disagree with you, but since that asshole can’t stop pissing on the brakes, you might have a point. Safety first. Can’t have calipers freezing up.
The tractor will very soon be sufficiently smart enough to see the object and avoid it or call for help from a human half a world away
The “futuristic” tractor falls down and can’t get back up again, and help is half a world away? That sounds..sufficiently efficient. /s
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They'll have the tech out to take a look sometime next month.
Unless you want to pay a little extra for the express service...
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And what, pray tell, is that human "half a world away" going to do when the crop harvester has its metal detector shut down the machine every 10 feet because some idiot marked buried things with metal wire flags through the field and never came back after the work was done to clean up after themselves?
Or any of the other myriad bits of metal that find their way into fields. Including bits and pieces of other machinery that was there prior?
Because I can with 100% certainty that those things happen, and often
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Or beacons of one sort or another at the edges of a field, make them cheap, maybe in the early days just put radar reflectors on top, have a bunch so not all have to be in exactly the right place.
The human going into the field problem also doesn't require sophistication like that Waymo programming for uncommitted pedestrians hanging out just a foot or two into the road as discussed in a previous topic. Just stop if you see one, maybe use Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) tech to decide if it's a farmer co
Losing customers to Japanese machine manufacturers (Score:5, Insightful)
>> make them cheap ...
John Deere is absolutely not in the business of "make them cheap"
They are in the business of "losing customers to Japanese machine manufacturers by transforming everything into a subscription"
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Losing customers to Japanese machine manufacturers? Sorry but you don't know what you are talking about.
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That was my first thought, that this driverless idea from John Deere is their antidote to the right-to-repair legislation. Now some of the components have to talk to the autopilot and that's a critical safety feature and customers can't be given access to it lest a hostile nation hack the tractors and cause a famine. Bonus, it's fragile and costs extra.
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Self-driving tractors for decades in China? Are you just making this stuff up? Sorry, no. China does not have self-driving tractor technology for sale that Deere is trying to compete with. Chinese companies do make small tractors, and many now make and sell low-cost GPS guidance equipment for any tractor. But self-driving tractors? Nope.
Further there's just not a lot of demand for that in China where agriculture is still very much done with human labor. Besides that, self-driving tractors face a lot of
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Wow. Hate having to always state my credentials when people think they know anything about modern farming. Have you ever done any actual field work? From what you say I would never put you in the seat of any of my tractors doing field work! Having farmed for decades I can assure you that self-driving tractors involves a lot more nuance than you understand. Watch some of the youtube farmers and you'll get a feel for everything that can go wrong in the field. Stuck in wet spots (sometimes you can get th
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Sorry coming up blank on the search. Perhaps you'd like to supply a link to an actual self-driving tractor?
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Yeah. But there are some crops that aren't compatible with mechanized harvesting (GPS guided or not). That's where the labor shortage is the most critical. Saving one driver isn't going to help much with this. More braceros will.
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What crops can't be harvested mechanically? It seems that there is a machine out there for basically any crop these days...
Or is it more like "no-one has invented a harvester for this that can do a better job than the humans?"
Re: Good for farms (Score:2)
aren't most berries still pocked by hand?
I am pretty sure the raspberries at your local store are picked by hand.
Re:Good for farms (Score:5, Informative)
What crops can't be harvested mechanically?
Pretty much anything that's a perennial, a low-lying shrub, a small berry, a fungus, or a root... especially anything where the product size isn't absurdly consistent. [eatingwell.com] Double-especially for anything where machine extraction damages the plant and destroys fruiting sites.
A quick, non-exhaustive list...
- Apples
-Grapes
-Strawberries
-Blueberries
-Peppers
-Nuts, of almost all varieties
-Olives
-Oranges
-Peaches
-Avocados
-Tomatoes
-Onions
-Ginger
-Mushrooms
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Google suggests mechanical harvesters exist for most of these. I have no idea though if they work or how good they are (or whether they would damage the plant), just that they exist.
Re: Good for farms (Score:3)
many of those have harvester for industrial purpose but human harvester for retail purpose. Think making strawberry syrup vs fresh strawberries at the store.
Not sure which of these are covered lime this But thos is rypical
Grapes are typically harvested by hand to be able to only harvest the grapes that are at the desired ripe ess rather than all of them. This requires manual inspection and/or tasting.
Re:Good for farms (Score:4, Funny)
A quick, non-exhaustive list...
- Apples
-Grapes
-Strawberries
-Blueberries
-Peppers
-Nuts, of almost all varieties
-Olives
-Oranges
-Peaches
-Avocados
-Tomatoes
-Onions
-Ginger
-Mushrooms
Thanks, now I'm starving...
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Wait until Trump eliminates the farm workforce.
Then you can argument starving.
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Add to that the ship building industry. Congress wants a Navy to compete with China, preferably before it invades Taiwan. Currently, the Navy is so far behind that it won't help Taiwan. A big problem for the ship builders upon which the Navy must rely: migrant labor, they shot full of migrant labor either because native born Americans do not want to do those jobs (they are difficult), or cannot do those jobs (wielding a welding iron or torch is not for amateurs), or do not want to live on the Gulf Coast or
Re:Good for farms (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Good for farms (Score:3)
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There are harvesting machine for those (Score:3)
tomato https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I did not bother looking for more. You may not be wrong about some crop being harder to automatically harvest, but you are outdated in your take about what can or cannot be automatically harvested.
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What crops can't be harvested mechanically?
Pretty much anything that's a perennial, a low-lying shrub, a small berry, a fungus, or a root... especially anything where the product size isn't absurdly consistent. [eatingwell.com] Double-especially for anything where machine extraction damages the plant and destroys fruiting sites.
A quick, non-exhaustive list...
It's just a matter of time before a Boston Dynamics-type robot is made to pick stuff like apples, cotton, peaches, etc. As soon as someone can make the cost work, it'll eliminate 90+ percent of manual harvest labor. It'll happen in our lifetimes.
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We already have automatic harvesters for many of these. They're just a bit too expensive and damaging to the plant at the moment to make them competitive with cheap experienced pickers.
The next breakthrough that is ongoing is likely going to eliminate the obstacle. That being machine vision + properly actuated and real time adapting robotic arms. There are already working prototypes for those in the fields clocking hours and eliminating last bugs.
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Apples?
They literally have machines that can grab an apple tree and shake apples from it while catching them below. I'm sure they do for peaches as well.
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That's global. We haven't automated that sort of harvesting yet. Used to be students doing it here in Finland, now they import Eastern Europeans since students are no longer willing to do manual labor.
But this automation is coming. There already are test rigs for even harder things to pick like strawberries. It's a combination of machine vision and real time adjusting robotic arms optimized for that specific crop. Takes time to develop the correct software that has low enough error rate to be competitive. T
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Re: Good for farms (Score:2)
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GPS involves receiving & synchronizing radio signals from 3 or more satellites to get a fix on the earth. Any scrambling mechanism would have to interfere with those frequencies and confuse devices getting a fix. That probably means scrambling has to be done either line of sight, or from Russia's own satellites in orbit, e.g. their GLONASS satellites although most of those cover Russia although the footprint might well cover chunks of Europe.
A lot of devices will also take a fix from GLONASS, or GPS, or
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Those nations don't really have many fields next to Russian borders. For example in Finland, ag is concentrated in South and South-West. And there aren't many towns near the border either. It's mostly very sparsely populated outside a couple.
Also, these don't use GPS. They use StarFire. GPS is utterly insufficient for ag in terms of accuracy.
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No they very much do use GPS, Glonass, and Galileo.
For certain broad-acre practices, GPS with only WAAS corrections are sufficient to get 12" of pass-to-pass accuracy. Deere's Starfire system, and also Trimble's RTX satellite PPP system, accuracy can be increased further. For the ultimate in relative accuracy, ground-based RTK systems allow GPS to achieve 1.5 cm relative accuracy.
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Again, they do not. Unless really behind in ag, which isn't a thing in developed nations.
This comes from need to avoid double spray-no spray on fields, which can cause things like pest nests surviving and devouring the whole field and fields around it. GPS is insufficiently accurate for this work.
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Ahh ignorance. Sorry but don't actually know what you're talking about.
I use GPS and Glonass in my tractor every day in Canada. My newest GNSS receivers actually pick up GPS, Glonass, Galileo, Beidou, and Japan's system, all at the same time. Many of my machines utilize RTK, which brings in GNSS observations at my base station and transmits them to the tractors, where the receivers calculate the phase shift in the GPS signals, and correct the signal down to 1.5 cm relative accuracy. All using GPS! When
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Ah, splitting hairs. "But it also uses other forms of GPS for assist, but accuracy is degraded". Indeed.
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Not sure where you got that quoted text from. I certainly didn't say it. And I certainly did not split hairs. I know what Starfire is. You apparently do not. Although I don't understand the math behind RTK or PPP corrections, I do understand the principles of how it works and GNSS forms the basis of it.
If GPS is jammed, RTK or Starfire PPP simply does not work. Period.
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That is not how GPS scrambling works.
And an autonomous tractor does not need GPS anyway.
FACEPALM.
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My points are:
A) to jam GPS you need to be close to the location of the receiver
B) you do not need GPS to navigate a tractor over a field to plow it or harvest it
So? what else do you want to know? How to navigate 30 jammer satellites into the same orbits of the 30 operating GPS satellites: to jam them out for ever and for good?
To jam a damn tractor in the middle of nowhere: you need an airplane or balloon or similar vehicle over it, to jam out the GPS satellites. Never ever going to happen anywhere in the w
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Yes they do very much require GPS for autonomous operation. Yes I am a farmer and yes I have a lot of experience with GPS guidance. And yes I know robotics engineers who have made actual autonomous tractors (in this instance red and blue machines a few years ago). And I know of farmers right now working on their own autonomous tractors. And yes they all rely on GPS/Glonass/Galileo.
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all we need now is AI consumers
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This was predicted in satire in 1954: https://archive.org/details/ga... [archive.org]
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it won't be funny when classism wrecks our society ... greedy people are evil
Let me guess (Score:3)
This feature can't be purchased and it stops working when you stop paying?
Guess they're counting on Trump's detention camps becoming a reality. https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
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Wait until airplanes have that feature.
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Wait until airplanes have that feature.
Automating airplanes is interesting, because while flying is much more complicated than driving, the traffic environment is much more controlled. The weather factor is easier understood than changes in streets and construction, mountains don't move around (and antenna towers and tall buildings near airports are in locations known to the FAA, even under construction), and "road" closures are all entirely managed. And most of all: there's not a lot of random traffic unpredictably in your way, and NO PEDESTRIA
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Wait until airplanes have that feature.
Automating airplanes>
Doesn't work perfectly when all the engines fail* and you have to decide whether to return to the airport, or the Hudson. Or when the airplane structurally fails in some catastrophic way. On the other hand, human pilots often don't solve those problems, either.
(* But it works fine for failure of a less-than-critical number of engines and stuff like that.)
Mainly what airline pilots do these days is monitor the automation, and make decisions about routing around weather, and such. And be around for when part
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Even "little" 4-seater amateur airplanes these days are equipped with a "Safe Home" big red button for a non-pilot to push. It automatically finds a safe airport, informs ATC about the emergency, and safely lands the airplane for you. It is for when the pilot becomes incapacitated -- the wife or whoever is sitting up there with him just pushes the button, and the ambulance picks up the stroked-out pilot at the airport. All automatic.
That smells fishy so I googled it and that's not really a thing. It's a thing in that is very new in one plane. Certainly not installed en masse and I bet it's not a cheap option.
https://www.tbm.aero/news/card... [tbm.aero]
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Re: Let me guess (Score:2)
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He did it now because Congress and el Bunko cannot make political points right it now. And there is no point in keeping the ones that just got released.
Stalinist? Do you even know what that means? Or is this just another Maggot rant?
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will auto driver to the dealer for any service and (Score:2)
will auto driver to the dealer for any service and will shut down if any non dealer part is installed
Deere Museum (Score:2)
On a visit to the John Deere Pavilion in Moline, IL, I was amazed to see a tractor with no cab. Just a smooth surface, like the back of a horse. Turned out it was their first attempt at creating a self-driving tractor. I'm vaguely remembering circa early 1990s but it could have been earlier. They explained that they designed their own circuit boards, wireless communications, and even had dabbled in early launched satellite tech for use on farms.
There's a lot of tech built into those machines.
Dear John (Score:5, Informative)
Today, Dear John puts a lot of tech to bar you from owning the machine, and forbid you to repair.
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So how do you intervene to stop it when it goes crazy and starts "harvesting" the nearby town ?
Oh that's right, justifcation for farmers and police to have anti-tank weapons
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"Just a smooth surface"
like a Ken Doll??
Deere is really into tech for tech's sake. They did all this before the tech was really available because they have to impress investors. They also like to pretend they're solving the world's food and farming problems rather than making them worse.
Somehow, Ned Ludd returned (Score:1)
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You going to seriously deny "the devil finds work for idle hands"? See all the recent works on elite overproduction to move this into the modern age.
In any case, boiling this ocean is not a job for heavy equipment manufactures like John Deere
A John Deere, you say? (Score:2)
Autonomous lawnmower?
Oblig:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Dagnabbit....THIS one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Solar flares? (Score:2)
The same John Deere whose GPS-guided tractors can't function properly and are damaging harvests regularly when the Sun throws a tantrum? That John Deere is going to give us reliable autonomous tractors? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
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It's now or never (Score:2)
If they dont get it proper working within the next 4 years, they're toast. There is the window of 4 years for them to have the accidents, and make it mainstream. If they fail the public won't accept self-driving cars from 2029 onwards because new administrations will err on the side of zero accidents -- which would make self-driving cars basically impossible to develop.
BS cost of repairs.. (Score:5, Insightful)
A movie named Maximum Overdrive (Score:2)
I'm suspicious of anything John Deere (Score:2)
Re:I'm suspicious of anything John Deere (Score:5, Interesting)
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The tech already exists for irregular shaping,you already have tractors that learn the row locations for harvesting purposes.
for obstacles that is far simpler in a field then out on streets. With the proper sensors even better than humans since they would be able to detect things hidden by the produce being harvested.
Cool (Score:2)
mechanical autopilot (Score:2)
Driverless tractors are good (Score:3)
John Deere is not. They need to support right to repair
John Deere Thinks.. (Score:2)
.. that there might be still some more money to be squeesed from farmers with new tech that is even harder to bypass the DRM on.
Monthly rental of 2/3 what an employee costs. (Score:2)
John Deere will only offer this on a per month rental contract with a multi-year term. There is no employment-at-will for robots, only humans get subjected to that.
I used to work for an autonomous robot cleaning company. This is how they set things up.
Labor Shortage? (Score:2)
I guess driverless tractors will help if you're down a driver, that's not much of a labor shortage.