We drive a John Deere tractor 1,288 miles away at CES 2024
At CES 2024, John Deere showed off its new autonomous tractor technology, which allows farmers to till their fields without being in the cab or paying much attention at all, really. By utilizing an app, the farmer can stop and start the tractor, respond to potential hindrances ahead, adjust speeds and tilling implement depths, and of course, which field the tractor is autonomously tilling. In this video, Autoblog senior editor James Riswick operates a tractor 1,288 miles away in Austin, Texas. John Deere’s autonomous tractor technology is currently undergoing beta testing with actual owners/farmers, collecting data necessary to eliminate as many false positives (i.e. the tractor coming to an automatic stop despite not needing to and wasting the farmer’s time) before it hits the market fully within a couple of years.
Video Transcript
- So I'm here at CES. I'm with John Deere. And up there, you can see a live feed from Austin, Texas of an actual John Deere tractor that I am operating hopefully here using this app.
So I have told the surrounding nothing-- you can see the lights blinking-- that this vehicle is about to be operating autonomously. What this allows a farmer to do is operate a tractor remotely, but also potentially operate more than one. That's a huge time saver. It's a huge manpower saver. One especially good tractor operator can now use multiple ones at the same time.
And it's-- basically what you do is you can see this map down here. You predetermine, you just give the app what the map is. That's the pink line. And then you tell it what the width of your implement is that's over there. And then the app figures out the exact grid that it needs to operate to accomplish the task.
Now, on the app itself, you got your in-field speed you can adjust. You can adjust your turn speed and then the dip of the implement. And otherwise-- and then you can obviously your live view here as well on the app. So you know, there it is.
I mean, clearly, although there is some expertise in order to program it, as you can see here, any idiot can do it. And pausing and let's watch it come to a stop. There you go stop. Operating a tractor from thousands of miles away, pretty cool.
