JOHN Deere has kicked off the new year in style by launching its new fully autonomous 8R tractor that can be completely controlled in the field by a mobile phone.

Launched at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, this new auto 8R is not a concept tractor and will be commercially available to customers later this year. The machine uses John Deere’s 8R tractor with a TruSet enabled chisel plough, GPS guidance system, and new advanced technologies.

The goal, said John Deere, was to provide technology that can help farmers feed a global population that is expected to grow to 10bn by 2050. With less land available to grow this food coupled with a shrinking skilled labour pool and growing issues created by climate change, autonomous technology will play a key role in driving agriculture efficiency forward.

Diving into the technology on the new auto John Deere 8R, the tractor has six pairs of stereo cameras, which enables 360° obstacle detection and the calculation of distance. Images captured by the cameras are passed through a deep neural network that classifies each pixel in approximately 100 milliseconds and determines if the machine continues to move or stops, depending on if an obstacle is detected.

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The autonomous tractor is also continuously checking its position relative to a geofence, ensuring it is operating where it is supposed to, and is accurate to within less than one inch. All a farmer has to do to use the new tractor is drive it to the field and configure it for autonomous operation.

Using John Deere Operations Centre Mobile, they can swipe from left to right to start the machine. While the machine is working, the farmer can leave the field to focus on other tasks while monitoring the machine’s status from their mobile device.

This mobile technology from John Deere provides access to live video, images, data, and metrics, and allows a farmer to adjust speed, depth, and more. In the event of any job-quality anomalies, or machine-health issues, farmers will be notified remotely and can make adjustments to optimise the performance of the machine.

Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, said: “You fast forward a century from those first tractors and you'll find some of the most advanced robotic machines are being used on the farm to feed the world. If you visit a farm, you'll see as much technology in the field as you will in Silicon Valley.

“This precise location-sensing technology enables farmers to place seeds, spread nutrients and harvest their crops without having to touch the steering wheel. Without this self-driving technology, farming is incredibly exhausting mentally and physically. GPS technology allows farmers to spend their time in the cab of a tractor looking at the real-time data they are collecting during the job they are doing and making adjustments.

“The world's population is expected to grow from about 8bn to nearly 10bn people by 2050, increasing the global food demand by 50%. Farmers must feed this growing world population and it's our job at John Deere to help them. The future of agriculture starts now,” he added.