Tractors Are Getting Smarter
money.cnn.com
Tractors Are Getting Smarter
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#2Their GPS steering is really cool. I think they get better accuracy through multiple GPS receivers spread out across the entire tractor.
Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#3Their GPS steering is really cool. I think they get better accuracy through multiple GPS receivers spread out across the entire tractor.
Some vendors use multiple receivers, but Deere uses one, with possibly one or more on the implement(s) being towed, depending on the configuration. RTK provides centimetre level accuracy with the single receiver.
Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#4Their GPS steering is really cool. I think they get better accuracy through multiple GPS receivers spread out across the entire tractor.
It's complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarFire_%28navigation_system%...
Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#5Deere's recent patent filings point to a totally autonomous managed fleet of farm equipment. They've had a long standing relationship with NREC out of CMU to develop autonomous and semi-autonomous systems.
In terms of accuracy, here's a metric to think about: due to fewer overlaps and misses, yields were up 7.6% and cost savings were up 6.8% - and this was with just recent tech advances.
Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#6Deere's recent patent filings point to a totally autonomous managed fleet of farm equipment. They've had a long standing relationship with NREC out of CMU to develop autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. In terms of accuracy, here's a metric to think about: due to fewer overlaps and misses, yields were up 7.6% and cost savings were up 6.8% - and this was with just recent tech advances.
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Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#7Deere's recent patent filings point to a totally autonomous managed fleet of farm equipment. They've had a long standing relationship with NREC out of CMU to develop autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. In terms of accuracy, here's a metric to think about: due to fewer overlaps and misses, yields were up 7.6% and cost savings were up 6.8% - and this was with just recent tech advances.
Where are you getting those numbers from? Surely such improvements would be fairly isolated to an acre or two, rather than hundreds of acres. Those numbers (6.8% and 7.6%) aren't in the article.
Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#8My family run John Deeres with Starfire and greenstar. With our neighbours we have several RTK stations to get centimetre accuracy.
When we got our first auto-steer in 2001 it changed my school holidays.. Instead of having to drive mind numbingly slowly I was able to read books, and then progressively shift onto movies etc with the first video iPods etc. awesome. Huge increases in productivity and reduced inputs.
On the other hand, our neighbours who have often got seasonal workers to drive tractors have lost several tractors due to the workers not paying attention and running into power poles etc.
I have heard that the biggest obstacle to self driving machines has been the legal implications of having a tractor with no driver. It would be great to overcome this but there's still a way to go because at the moment no system I have seen can handle obstacles, specially if they haven't been programmed in (at the moment you can place a mark near trees, and it will beep when you near the end of your run to alert you to turn around) - also each implement requires very précise monitoring that may change markedly in the same field depending on the conditions in terms of ground speed, implement height and a host of other factors.
Awesome technology
Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#9My uncle was an early adopter of these sorts of things for his rice farm. When I saw the movie "Cars" for the first time and the film portrayed Tractors as "dumb" I thought to myself, if you really knew what went into a modern tractor you would not portray it as "dumb" in an animated movie.
Re: Tractors Are Getting Smarter
#10I remember when having an air conditioned cab was considered to be high end farming...
Then it was 8 track stereo, and microwave ovens.
The tractors were over $100,000 before the advent of the personal computer. I wonder what the cost of a smart tractor is now?