John Deere embracing autonomy, other technology advancements

Agricultural giant John Deere is consistently expanding its repertoire of products and offerings, with a strong push to adopt emerging technologies. In the fast-moving digital age, companies that are at the forefront could be left behind - and that's exactly why Deere continues to show interest in software, autonomous technologies, and other solutions relatively new to farming.

2

The company wants to be able to take care of row crops with fully autonomous machinery by 2030 but understands the pressure to meet that goal is extremely high. Although research continues into fully autonomous solutions, Deere is currently retrofitting existing tractors so they're able to use more precision seeding measures, along with GPS-based self-steering technology.

As noted by Jorge Heraud, VP of automation and autonomy for Deere, per a CNBC report:

"We've curated hundreds of thousands of images from different farm locations and under various weather and lighting conditions - so that with machine learning, the tractor can understand what it's seeing and react accordingly. This capability also allows the farmer, instead of being in the tractor, to operate it remotely while doing something else."

The agricultural robot industry, dubbed agribots, is expected to increase from a $7.57B industry in 2021 up to a massive 35.93B industry by 2030. Deere is actively working on a few tech-centric endeavors, trying to expand its portfolio of offerings.

Deere is actively seeking proposals focused on satellite communications (SATCOM) that can help with the company's fleet of intelligent machines. Autonomous tractors would be able to interact with the John Deere Operations Center using real-time communications, so farmers can use their smartphone to start or stop a machine, track work progress, and how to solve any problems with the autonomous unit.

Autonomous tractor projects will continue to be a major effort by a few companies, with almost 30 different projects being developed. None have been commercially released, so Deere and others will scramble to reach the finish line prior to the competition.