John Deere Thinks Driverless Tractors Are the Answer To Labor Shortages (qz.com)
- Reference: 0175842571
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/07/0046231/john-deere-thinks-driverless-tractors-are-the-answer-to-labor-shortages
- Source link: https://qz.com/john-deere-driverless-tractors-labor-shortages-1851733496
> John Deere is going all in on autonomous tractors. The company, which [1]first introduced a driverless vehicle in 2022, said self-driving machines will [2]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 [3]The Verge . "No one's in the machine."
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> Hindman said the company wants "more of our machines to [4]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.
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> 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: [5]Software Fees To Make Up 10% of John Deere's Revenues By 2030
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/01/04/227209/john-deeres-self-driving-tractor-lets-farmers-leave-the-cab----and-the-field
[2] https://qz.com/john-deere-driverless-tractors-labor-shortages-1851733496
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24334357/john-deere-autonomous-tractor-truck-orchard-mow-ces
[4] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/02/17/0558239/will-precision-agriculture-be-harmful-to-farmers
[5] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/09/13/225210/software-fees-to-make-up-10-of-john-deeres-revenues-by-2030
Let me guess (Score:2)
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. [1]https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/07/texas-trump-immigration-agenda-border-mass-deportations/
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.
Somehow, Ned Ludd returned (Score:1)
A solution to labour shortages? How about we stop pandering to the latter-day puritans and get back to finding a solution to labour itself.
Re: (Score:2)
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
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:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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.