John Deere Unveils New Line of Autonomous Vehicles to Address Labor Shortages

John Deere says its self-driving tractors and trucks will help address labor shortages

The next time you pass a farm tractor tilling a field, check to make sure there's somebody in the cab. Chances are, there won't be. Today at CES, John Deere announced a host of new fully autonomous vehicles that it says will revolutionize farming, landscaping, and construction. Among the new vehicles the company will have to show off are an autonomous tractor, a robot lawn mower, a crewless dump truck, and another driverless tractor, but this one designed specifically for orchards. "We're taking our tech stack, which is nearly three decades in the making, and we're extending it to more of our machines to safely run autonomously in these unique and complex environments that our customers work in every day," said Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere. "When we talk about autonomy, we mean full autonomy," he added. "No one's in the machine." It's been three years since John Deere unveiled its first autonomous tractor. Commercial deliveries began in 2022, and now Hindman says that many farms have put the company's robot equipment to work. "Those tractors are already being used by farmers to prepare the soil for planting in the next year," he said. Now the company is doubling down on autonomy, at a time when other vehicle manufacturers are cutting their losses. John Deere says its autonomous machines can help farmers address labor shortages, while also meeting the growing demand for food, infrastructure, and housing. The company's second-generation tractor is designed for large-scale agricultural operations. And in order to ensure a full, 360-degree view of the world, John Deere added 16 cameras all around the cab of the tractor that provide for triple overlapping feeds. The images are then sent for processing to an onboard Nvidia GPU because John Deere wanted to be sure the tractor's edge AI system was doing all of its predictions and planning on the vehicle itself, and not up in the cloud. "This ensures that the machine is running safe and reliable," said Willy Pell, CEO of John Deere subsidiary Blue River Technology, which designs machine learning systems for agricultural operations. John Deere's first-generation tractors were designed specifically for the slowest and easiest works, which is fall tillage with a chisel file. The second-generation system will be for a broader set of operations, with John Deere setting the goal for a fully autonomous farming system for corn and soybeans in the US by 2030. John Deere's next robot vehicle is the company's first for construction sites: an articulated dump truck (ADT). The heavy-duty truck is 34 feet long, 12 feet tall, and can carry over 92,000 pounds of construction materials -- the equivalent of seven African elephants -- in its front bucket. John Deere's executives have given it the nickname "Dusty." The job of a dump truck operator in quarries and other sites is tough but also repetitive and boring. By removing the driver, John Deere hopes to improve safety while also helping improve productivity. The ADT operates using the same tech stack as its farming siblings, with the added ability to dynamically change its routing information to get around people and other vehicles on narrow roads through construction sites. The truck can also receive directions from remote operators about location and timing -- but that doesn't make it remote-controlled. "It's unsupervised, it's capable of making decisions and operating safely on its own," said Maya Sripadam, senior product manager at Blue River Technology. "So it's segmenting the world into different classes, it's using StarFire GPS to localize itself on the road, and it's navigating between a load zone and a haul zone." John Deere also revealed another autonomous tractor, this one designed to run on diesel for pulling air blast sprayers through nut orchards. Sprayers are used to apply pesticides, growth regulators, and nutrients to ensure a healthy crop. Nuts are a huge business in the US, especially in California. And with 80 percent of the world's almond crop grown in the Golden State, labor shortages have proven to be a perennial problem. Workers typically drive up and down endless rows of orchards up to 10 hours a day at 2.5 mph. Every single tree needs to be sprayed six to eight times per year, with work starting in February and going through July or August -- right into the hottest times of the year. "The work is exhausting and it's repetitive," said Igino Cafiero, director of High Value Crop Autonomy, "but it's also absolutely essential to protect the trees from pests and disease." But nut orchards, with their dense canopies of trees, are a much different environment than corn or soybean fields. John Deere had to add lidar laser sensors to help improve the tractor's sensing and guidance capabilities because GPS is often obstructed. Aside from that, the tractor uses the same second-generation technology stack as its tractors for field tillage. The last machine John Deere revealed was an autonomous lawn mower for large-scale commercial landscaping jobs. The all-electric mower features four pairs of stereo cameras, one in the front, one in the back, and one on each side. They're positioned as high as possible on the machine to give a complete 360-degree view around the mower. That's fewer cameras than the tractor or dump truck, but enough for the size of the machine. A large office park or campus yard is very similar to a field or construction, in that it's a "constrained environment" with much less chance for unpredictable behavior, Blue River's Pell said. "The use cases we have, the tech just really fits these environments so well," he added. "And it's combined with this deep customer pain around labor availability and quality that just makes all this the perfect time for everything." John Deere didn't announce pricing for any of its autonomous vehicles, but past reports have noted that the premium over non-robotic equipment would be "significant" -- perhaps as much as 10 percent. A regular 8R tractor and the 2430 chisel plow can cost as much as $500,000, which suggests an added $50,000 for an autonomous version. That could irk some farmers, especially those at odds with John Deere over the company's recalcitrance over self-repairs. The Federal Trade Commission is currently investigating whether John Deere used unfair practices related to the repair of its agricultural equipment. "Pricing will vary based on specific products and configurations and will be shared at a later date," John Deere spokesperson Diego Rivera said.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it's been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren't enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It's been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can't find labor to fill open positions, he said. "They have to figure out how to do more work with less people. Labor is a common challenge across these industries, yet we rely on them to provide the food, the fuel, fiber, infrastructure and the landscaping care that we depend upon every day," Hindman said. These facts by themselves aren't political; they're about business and providing food for the world. Hindman noted there is a $15 trillion infrastructure ap that needs to be closed by 2040. He said John Deere loves to solve these problems and it is taking its tech stack, three decades in the making, and applying it across more machines to safely run autonomously in complex environments. It will add the tech to both new equipment and existing vehicles. "Our agriculture, construction, and commercial landscaping customers all have work that must get done at certain times of the day and year, yet there is not enough available and skilled labor to do the work," said Hindman. "Autonomy can help address this challenge. That's why we're extending our technology stack to enable more machines to operate safely and autonomously in unique and complex environments. This will not only benefit our customers, but all of us who rely on them to provide the food, fuel, fiber, infrastructure, and landscaping care that we depend on every day." Building on Deere's autonomous technology first revealed at CES 2022, the company's second generation autonomy kit combines advanced computer vision, AI, and cameras to help the machines navigate their environments. The company is using connectivity, renewable fuels and electrification. Autonomy Expanding to More Machines Autonomous 9RX Tractor for Large-Scale Agriculture: Tillage is one of the busiest times of the year for farmers. With the second-generation autonomy kit, featuring 16 individual cameras arranged in pods to enable a 360-degree view of the field, farmers can step away from the machine and focus their time on other important jobs. The advanced autonomy kit also calculates depth more accurately at larger distances, allowing the tractor to pull more equipment and drive faster. Willy Pell, CEO of John Deere's Blue River Technology, said the company added a lot more cameras since the first generation and it coordinates those cameras relative to each other. It allows the machine to do operations 40% faster. An autonomy kit works for every type of job needed. The compute sits on the edge, inside the tractor, and they process every single pixel. They're also rugged, Hindman said. The team has had to figure out how to deal with things like insects, which can cause problems at night when the tractors are running and the insects get in the way of the cameras, Pell said. Autonomous 5ML Orchard Tractor for Air Blast Spraying: Protecting crops through air blast spraying is a challenging and repetitive job. Featuring the latest autonomy kit with added Lidar sensors to address the dense canopies found in orchards, the initial machine will be offered with a diesel engine. A battery electric tractor of comparable size and capacity to existing diesel 5M/ML models on the market today will follow. Igino Cafiero, director of high value crop autonomy at John Deere, said in a briefing that such tractors have to operate in dense areas of foliage that can grow as high as 30 feet. That creates accuracy challenges for GPS navigation and obstacle detection. The company added LIDAR sensors to detect obstacles and drive down a row while flagging humans, pipes, or other objects. 460 P-Tier Autonomous Articulated Dump Truck (ADT) for Quarry Operations: Quarries supply the essential raw materials vital for building roads, buildings, and infrastructure, and it's a complex process to mine, process, and transport materials. Using the second-generation kit, the ADT will handle the repetitive tasks of transporting material around the quarry to facilitate different steps in the cycle. Maya Sripadam, senior product manager at John Deere's Blue River Technology, said there are eight quarries within a 12-mile radius of the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. That's pretty common. She noted that the world's population is expected to grow from eight billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050, and that increases demand on the food supply and the need for roads and more. UN Habitat estimates we need to build 96,000 new houses a day to provide enough housing for the increased population. Quarries supply those materials to the tune of thousands of tons of material per day. Operating these machines is tough, as it requires precise operation with rudimentary tools and rugged places. Operators often have to rely on instructions via walkie-talkie to move 92,000 pounds of material -- the weight of seven African elephants -- around a quarry safely, Sripadam. They're often operating day and night on a regular schedule. The dump trucks are built in Davenport, Iowa, and they use the tech component stacks developed over 30 years. Each truck uses connectivity for satellites internet, advanced controls and high-performance GPUs. The autonomy kit sits atop a truck and gives it a 360-degree view of the land around it. It helps it navigate obstacles or pull over for a faster moving vehicle to pass. Trucks can operate autonomously without supervision in some work and be supervised by humans in others. Autonomous Battery Electric Mower for Commercial Landscaping: Commercial landscaping is a highly competitive industry and having the staff to support different bids is essential. The autonomous commercial mower leverages the same camera technology as other Deere autonomous machines, but on a reduced scale since the machine has a smaller footprint. With two cameras on the front, left, right, and rear, 360-degree coverage is achieved, and staff can focus on other aspects of the job. Matt Potter, director of robotics and mobility technology at John Deere, said in a briefing that landscaping places also face a chronic shortage of labor. He the mower taps the same autonomy kit that the tractors use but it gets by with fewer cameras. As an electric mower, it operates quietly and can be used early in the morning without waking the humans. Select new machines will be autonomy ready with retrofit kits available for certain existing machines, providing customers with multiple paths to adoption based on where they are in their technology journey. The machines are managed via John Deere Operations Center Mobile, the company's cloud-based platform. By swiping left to right to start, the machine can be started once placed in the appropriate spot. Through the app, users also have access to live video, images, data and metrics, and the ability to adjust various factors like speed. In the event of any job quality anomalies or machine health issues, users will be notified remotely so they can make necessary adjustments. The big message is that the food that we eat and the work that goes into it -- through manual labor or advanced technology -- can't be taken for granted, said Hindman. And he noted that farmers don't want to spend their days sitting in these machines, given what they can do. At CES 2025, John Deere will have booth #5016 in the West Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The company's leaders are also speaking at these sessions on January 8:

Deere boosts bet on autonomous tractors with new machines

(Reuters) - Deere & Co strengthened its bet on autonomous machinery by unveiling new tractors and industrial equipment, capable of operating without the need for a human being in the cab, at the CES trade show in Las Vegas on Monday. The world's largest farm equipment maker is making strides towards automating manual work amid a shortage of skilled workers and high labor costs. In the agricultural sector, the challenge of finding workers to operate tractors has been a persistent issue and has been worsened by the pandemic. "Our agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping customers all have work that must get done at certain times of the day and year, yet there is not enough available and skilled labor to do the work," Deere chief technology officer Jahmy Hindman said. The Moline, Illinois-based company revealed the second generation of its autonomy kit, which combines advanced computer vision, AI and cameras to help machines navigate terrains, at CES 2025. Deere and other equipment makers such as Caterpillar have invested heavily in technology to automate off-highway vehicles such as farm tractors and mining vehicles. Apart from two autonomous tractors, Deere also revealed a dump truck for quarries and a battery electric commercial landscaping mower - all of them will be equipped with multiple cameras to facilitate full autonomy. Customers can also equip existing Deere tractors, articulated dump trucks and commercial mowers with autonomy kits, Deere said. (Reporting by Shivansh Tiwary in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)