John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machinery to address skilled labor shortages

Self-driving tractors may be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere It unveiled a new line of autonomous machinery and technology for the agricultural, construction and commercial landscaping fields.

The Moline, based in Illinois John Deere It has been in business for 187 years, yet was once a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the major technology trade show in Las Vegas, and is back in business. Consumer Electronics Show 2025 With more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This isn’t something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of interesting data on the big picture of technology.

The message the company is sending is that there are not enough skilled agricultural workers to do the work its customers need. This has been a challenge for most of the past two decades, Jahmi Hindman, John Deere’s chief technology officer, said at a news conference. A lot of technology is coming this fall and then.

He noted that the average farmer in the United States is over 58 years old and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. He said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are approximately 2.4 million farm jobs to fill annually; The agricultural workforce continues to shrink. (This is my cue for the anti-immigration crowd.)

While each of these industries faces its own set of challenges, one common factor is the availability of skilled labor.

In the construction industry, about 80% of contractors have difficulty finding skilled labor. In the commercial landscaping industry, 86% of landscaping business owners cannot find labor to fill open positions, he said.

“They have to figure out how to do more work with fewer people. Labor is a common challenge in these industries, yet we depend on it to provide the food, fuel, fiber, infrastructure and care for the landscapes we depend on every day,” Hindman said.

These facts in themselves are not political. They are about business and providing food to the world. Hyndman noted that there is $15 trillion worth of infrastructure that must be shut down by 2040. John Deere loves solving these problems, he said, and is taking its technology stack, which has been three decades in the making, and applying it across more devices to operate safely autonomously. In complex environments. The technology will add to both new equipment and existing vehicles.

“All of our agricultural, construction and commercial landscape clients have work that needs to be done at certain times of the day and year, yet there is not enough skilled labor available to do that work.”
Hindman said. “Autonomy can help meet this challenge. That’s why we’re expanding our technology portfolio to enable more machines to operate safely and autonomously in unique and complex environments. This will benefit not only our customers, but all of us who depend on them to provide food, fuel, fiber, infrastructure and care for our landscapes.” The nature that we depend on every day.

Building on Deere’s autonomous technology first unveiled at CES 2022, the company’s second-generation autonomous kit combines advanced computer vision, artificial intelligence and cameras to help machines navigate their environments. The company uses connectivity, renewable fuels and electricity.

Autonomy expands to include more machines

Independent 9RX tractor for large-scale farmingPlowing is one of the busiest times of the year for farmers. And with the second-generation autonomous kit, which includes 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 autonomous control package also calculates depth more accurately over greater distances, allowing the tractor to tow more equipment and drive faster.

Willie Bell, CEO of John Deere’s Blue River Technology, said the company has added a lot of cameras since the first generation and is coordinating those cameras relative to each other. It allows the machine to perform operations 40% faster. The autonomous toolkit suits all types of jobs required. The computation is located at the edge, inside the jar, and processes each pixel individually. It’s also powerful, Hindman said. Bell said the team had to figure out how to deal with things like insects, which can cause problems at night when tractors are running and insects get in the way of cameras.

Independent orchard tractor 5ml air sprayerCrop protection through aerial spraying is a difficult and repetitive task. Featuring the latest autonomous toolkit with additional Lidar sensors to process dense orchard canopies, the initial machine will be offered with a diesel engine. This will be followed by a battery electric tractor with a size and capacity similar to the 5M/ML diesel models on the market today.

Such tractors must operate in dense areas of foliage that can grow up to 30 feet high, Egino Cafiero, John Deere’s director of high-value crop autonomy, said at a news conference. This creates challenges with accuracy in GPS navigation and obstacle detection. The company added LIDAR sensors to detect obstacles and drive in single file while tagging humans, pipes or other objects.

460 Tier P Autonomous Articulated Trucks (ADT) for quarry operationsQuarries provide essential and vital raw materials for the construction of roads, buildings and infrastructure, which is a complex process of extracting, processing and transporting materials. Using the second generation toolkit, ADT will handle the repetitive tasks of moving material around the quarry to facilitate different steps in the cycle.

There are eight quarries within a 12-mile radius of Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, said Maya Sripadam, senior production manager for John Deere’s Blue River Technology. This is very common. She noted that the world population is expected to grow from eight billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050, increasing the demand for food supplies and the need for roads, among others.

UN-Habitat estimates that we need to build 96,000 new homes every day to provide enough housing for the growing population. Quarries supply these materials in the amount of thousands of tons of material per day.

Operating these machines is difficult, requiring careful operation with primitive tools and rough locations. 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 safe quarry in Sripadam. They often work day and night on a regular schedule.

Manufactured in Davenport, Iowa, the dump trucks use technology component packages developed over 30 years. Each truck uses satellite internet connectivity, advanced controls and high-performance graphics processing units. The autonomous instrument cluster sits atop the truck and gives it a 360-degree view of the surrounding terrain. It helps it pass obstacles or stop for a faster moving vehicle to pass. Trucks can operate autonomously without supervision in some jobs and supervised by humans in others.

Standalone battery powered electric mower for commercial landscaping: Commercial landscaping is a highly competitive industry and it is essential to have staff to support the various bids. The standalone commercial mower makes use of the same cam technology as other Deere standalone machines, but on a smaller scale because the machine footprint is smaller. With two cameras at the front, left, right and back, 360-degree coverage is achieved, and employees can focus on other aspects of the work.

Landscaping places also face chronic labor shortages, Matt Potter, John Deere’s director of robotics and mobility technology, said at a news conference. The mower uses the same self-control kit as tractors but operates with fewer cams. As an electric mower, it runs quietly and can be used early in the morning without waking people up.

Some of the new devices will be self-operating ready with retrofit kits available for some existing devices, providing customers with multiple paths to adoption based on where they are in their technology journey.

Machinery is managed via John Deere Operations Center Mobile, the company’s cloud platform. By swiping from left to right to start, the device can be turned on once it is in the right place.

Through the app, users can also access live video, photos, data and metrics, and the ability to adjust various factors such as speed. If there are any function quality anomalies or device safety issues, users will be notified remotely so they can make the necessary adjustments.

The big message, Hyndman said, is that the food we eat and the work that goes into it — through manual labor or advanced technology — cannot be taken for granted. He noted that farmers do not want to spend their days sitting at these machines, given what they can do.

At CES 2025, John Deere will have booth #5016 in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Company leaders are also speaking at these sessions on January 8:

• At 9 a.m., Diana Kovar, president of John Deere’s global agriculture and turf division, will speak on a panel discussion titled “Technology Without Borders: The Benefits of Technology for All Communities.” The discussion will take place in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, 2nd floor, N258.
• At 1 p.m., Sarah Schenkel, Director of Emerging Technologies at John Deere’s Intelligent Solutions Group (ISG), will speak on a panel titled “AI or Death? Why Farms Must Embrace the AI ​​Revolution to Survive.” The discussion will take place In the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, second floor, W218.
• At 3 p.m., Gaurav Bansal, Vice President of Engineering at Blue River Technology (a John Deere Company) will speak on a panel discussion titled “Robot Farm 2050: A Look at Robotics and the Future of Agriculture.” The discussion will be held in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, 2nd floor, W218.