“The fully autonomous capabilities that we have available today with our 8R in tillage applications will only continue to grow and develop as we see customers trying to address that labour availability and shortage that we see in many of their operations,” said Aaron Wetzel, vice-president of production systems for production and precision ag.

“We’ve publicly stated that by 2030, we want to have and demonstrate a fully autonomous production system for corn and soybean producers. That means every job through the beginning of tillage, planting, spraying and harvesting, we’ll be able to do that autonomously for our customers.”

Tailoring autonomous equipment first to corn and soybean producers allows the brand to reach the largest farming segment in North America, adding small grains and specialty crops capabilities as machines evolve.

That is the approach Deere has taken with its See and Spray Premium spot spray technology.

To prepare today’s new equipment for that day, the brand is beginning to offer its 8R and 9R tractors with an autonomy-ready option package. It means the tractor will leave the factory with all the hardware, software and safety systems it will need for a self-driving conversion.

The new autonomous-ready package will include rear implement ethernet, new visibility features, a back-up alarm, a 330-amp alternator, a brake controller and valve, and all the necessary connectors, controllers and harnesses.

The only additional item a farmer will need in the future to make the machine capable of autonomous operation will be the perception system, which consists of cameras and vision processing units.

Making machines capable of driving around a field is one thing. Having them control the complex operations they’re out there to perform adds another level of complexity.

“Having these tractors be easily able to upgrade into full autonomy is one of those areas we’re focusing on,” said Wetzel.

“What enables us to get there is the investments we’re making in job automation. Making machines smarter and easier to use will help our producers today and bring them along on the journey to full autonomous operation in the future.”

The move by Deere and other brands to move toward production of fully autonomous machines marks a major turning point in ag equipment evolution, one many wouldn’t have thought possible just a generation ago.

“I’ve been at John Deere 35 years and it’s amazing to see the transformation the company has gone through in the time I’ve worked with it,” he said.

“It’s astonishing. I think the pace of change is quickening. The amount of technology and new productive solutions we’re bringing to customers is only going to increase.”

But even though brands are preparing for a high-tech future, many producers may not be ready for that yet – or ever.

Wetzel said Deere understands that and will continue to produce machines with varying levels of sophistication.

“I think customers are all at a different point in their technology journey. What’s great is we offer the solutions from the very basic levels of technology all the way to full autonomy. So, wherever a customer is in their journey, John Deere has a solution for them.”

The post Deere reaches for fully autonomous fleet by 2030 appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

But after five years of sitting in a tractor, planting crooked rows of corn, he decided to do it his way instead.

“Even when I was a kid out discing or out drilling, I thought, ‘There’s got to be a better way,’” Laird told FarmTech attendees last month.

“I spent all this money on RTK (real-time kinematic) guidance, but I thought I could do better.”

So he did. In 2015, Laird — who worked as a computer programmer before coming back to the farm — automated his grandfather’s Massey tractor using less than $1,000 in parts and some basic computer programming.

That’s when things got really interesting.

He sent the tractor out to plant 50 acres of corn in the field across from his house using the simplest algorithms he could come up with. And it worked.

His first ‘tractobot’ was up and running.

“Automated tractors do not have to be expensive or complex,” said Laird.

You just need the know-how — and the freedom — to build one. That’s where open-source software and hardware come in, said Mannville-area farmer Brian Tischler, who also spoke at FarmTech.

Think of it a little like a cookie, he said. If you want a cookie, you need the recipe, and if you want a better cookie, you need to change the recipe.

With open-source software and hardware, anyone can tweak the recipe however they want. Closed source, on the other hand, is like buying a box of cookies — you can eat them, but you can’t make them yourself, and you can’t change them to suit your tastes.

Agriculture is mostly closed source.

“Open source is the absolute unicorn of agriculture,” said Tischler. “It basically does not exist. But it’s starting to.”

Open-source future

For most farmers, that’s fine — they don’t want to rig up an autonomous tractor on their own anyway. Moreover, in some cases, tinkering with your tractor to automate it could void your warranty.

But for others, open-source technologies will usher in the high-tech future of the agriculture industry.

“It will change agriculture,” said Tischler.

He started exploring open-source options when he hit a wall with ISOBUS, a system that helps ensure precision tools (such as displays) are compatible with different types of machinery. All he wanted to do was track where he had last seeded into the heavy residue on his field.

“It was the most frustrating experience of my life,” he said. “You can’t get the codes; it’s so locked down. To begin to play, you need at least $100,000 to start.”

So he decided to make his own app. The first thing he did was grab some open-source computer code. Well, almost. A quick Google search into open-source precision-seeding code turned up nothing.

“There was nothing out there. In terms of open source in agriculture, it didn’t exist.”

Tischler looked instead to the marine sector, which uses GPS in a lot of its systems. After scouring YouTube and online forums, he finally found the answers he was looking for.

AgOpenGPS was born.

“It’s literally a game. Instead of you running a game controller, the tractor is the controller.”

Using a visual display on a smart device or computer, the GPS system maps what has been seeded (in green) and what has not (in black).

“I turn the section on when it’s black and turn the section off when it’s green. It’s so simple.”

And the possibilities are pretty much endless — marking rocks in the field using Google Earth; tracking weed resistance in the field; controlling the sprayer or seeder; even automating the tractor itself.

“All of these things are doable with open source,” said Tischler. “You can build whatever you want.”

‘It should be simple’

And that’s what has farmers excited about this type of do-it-yourself technology.

“The more traditional approach is to wait for the big companies to come up with it,” said Ken Coles, general manager of Farming Smarter. “These guys don’t want to wait. They realize what’s possible.”

In a lot of ways, agriculture technology is behind the times, and farmers are starting to get frustrated by the snail’s pace of true innovation in the industry, said Coles, who also farms near Coaldale.

“I look at smartphones and what they can do, and then when I go into a tractor monitor and try to do the same thing, it’s like going back in time to the Apollo space mission,” he said.

“All these technical barriers are there. It’s ridiculous. It should be simple.”

This growing trend toward DIY equipment automation is one of the ways farmers are pushing back against this perceived lack of progress.

“These guys are going outside the box and bending some rules to do what they want to do,” said Coles, adding that the legality of reprogramming your equipment is still up in the air.

“It highlights the limitations that are placed upon us by big corporations.”

Right now, the people who are doing these on-farm automations tend to be “really techy,” but there are already some examples out there of what’s possible — and how easy it could be.

“Right now, the technical guys are doing it, but if enough people start doing it, there will be more easy solutions out there,” said Coles. “I think it will get to the point where it’s not that hard to do.”

Eventually, companies will start offering more automated solutions for farmers (the industry is already seeing some of that now), but the inevitable march toward automation will be taken in baby steps, said Coles.

“I feel pretty strongly that this path toward automation is the single biggest opportunity that’s going to shape agriculture over the next 20 years.

That makes some producers a little nervous, he added.

“I think some of them are terrified by this,” said Coles. “They’re wondering, ‘Well, what am I going to do now?’ There’s a fear of being replaced.”

Still lots to do

But the family farmer won’t become obsolete any time soon, Laird said.

“A lot of people think, ‘Great, I can go on vacation and check in from the beach,’” he said.

“I think of it as I can do all the things that it takes a human to do instead of trying to be a robot and stay on the line.”

Instead of relaxing on the couch while his tractor does the work, Laird is out in the field to check that seed is being properly placed or running to get fertilizer — things he can’t do from the cab of a tractor.

“I’ve been in the cab, and I planted very poorly,” said Laird. “If you want to know if you’re planting well, you need to get on the ground.”

For Laird, who has also done some automation on his grain cart and his combine, autonomous equipment eliminates the tedious parts of farming.

“I could only spend a few hours in a tractor before getting pretty fatigued,” he said. “With this auto steer, I could go all day and all night. What a huge difference.”

By supervising the operation from his truck or from the field itself, Laird is able to go about the business of farming.

“I’m in the truck answering calls or emails, and I look up and it’s done another 10 acres. The ability for me to concentrate on other things is a whole lot different.”

So far, the results speak for themselves.

“This year, I planted all of my corn — 535 acres — without being on the tractor while it was planting.”

And yes, the rows were perfect.

The post Robo-tractors invented by farmers are already here appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

However, could the era of huge, hulking tractors and the big implements they pull be coming to an end?

Norbert Beaujot thinks so, even though the founder of SeedMaster spent most of his career building some of those increasingly heavier and larger machines.

But the equipment made by his company and other manufacturers has some serious flaws, said Beaujot.

“We’ve become leaders in building really big equipment that’s successful in many ways but always carries with it inefficiencies and other kinds of hidden costs such as compaction and overall fuel usage,” he said.

Beaujot caught the imagination of Prairie farmers last summer when he unveiled a fully functioning DOT Autonomous Power Platform at the Ag in Motion outdoor farm show.

The U-shaped machine is a self-propelled, hydraulically driven platform that replaces the pulling of implements such as seeders in favour of, essentially, carrying them.

And most startlingly, there’s no cab.

Instead, GPS technology similar to that used in self-driving automobiles means the DOT platform can be programmed to follow a specific route and stop on a dime for any obstacles. All the while, it sends back a stream of data so the producer can monitor progress and diagnostics remotely with a tablet equipped with specialized software.

Putting a seeder or sprayer directly on the platform also means a smaller engine and lighter machine that burns considerably less fuel. And no cab means an end to the long, tiring hours involved in operating traditional equipment.

Farmers intrigued

Switching over to an entirely new set of machinery is obviously a major undertaking.

But Beaujot’s creation has definitely piqued the interest of many producers.

“I think it’s coming. I think there’s a big fit for it. I’d buy a prototype today if I could,” said Justin Kelly, a wheat, canola and pea producer and agronomy consultant from Cut Knife, Sask.

“We already have auto steer so half the time I’m sitting on a tractor or sprayer or something like that and I’m not driving it anyway. I’m just sitting there to make sure it’s working and turn around at the end of the field.”

Brianne Brault, who farms with husband Davy Matula east of High Prairie, said she hopes to buy one once the bugs are worked out and as long as it is reasonably priced.

“A brand new tractor is $700,000 and a brand new, great big seed drill can be in the $700,000 range — that’s $1.4 million to seed your crop,” she says. “If you can buy a less expensive robot that can run longer and save you some time, to me it’s a no-brainer.”

The DOT platform with a seeder and sprayer will be priced well under that, said Beaujot.

It’s estimated a full package including the platform, four product tanks on a 30-foot seeder, a 60-foot sprayer with a 1,000-gallon tank, and a grain cart will cost about US$500,000, he said. (It’s priced in U.S. dollars because most of the major components are purchased south of the border.)

“The reason it will cost less is because we are able to eliminate a lot of things,” said Beaujot. “We spend more on the power unit because it’s got a tremendous amount of electronics and sensors, but the implements become much, much cheaper.

“The sprayer is ridiculously cheap compared to a high-clearance sprayer, but even with simple items like grain carts, when you eliminate the wheels, spindles, axles, and hitches you take away a big part of the cost of that implement.”

‘Between obsession and passion’

Ask Beaujot about the thought process behind the DOT and he’ll tell you, “My whole life has been leading up to it.”

In 1991 he developed a key piece of precision ag technology — the first active hydraulic, ground-hugging, individual row opener. That innovation became the heart of air drill maker SeedMaster, located near Regina.

Ever since, Beaujot has been on the lookout for any ideas that make farming more economically and environmentally efficient. However, he’s often found himself frustrated by the trend towards ever bigger and heavier equipment.

Then came the first prototypes of self-driving cars.

The technology caught Beaujot’s imagination and he was soon looking at ways it could be applied to agriculture. His first instinct was to develop an autonomous seeder, but he felt that didn’t line up with the technology’s potential.

“It seemed to be a waste to develop something that good that is only meant for seeding,” he said. “So it got me looking at different ways of developing a platform that would handle multitudes of different implements.

“When I came up with the U shape as a way of handling a whole array of implements and having very quick ways of loading and unloading implements, it became something between an obsession and a passion.”

How DOT runs

The platform is 12×18 feet, weighs 12,000 pounds (without implements), and is powered by a 4.5-litre turbocharged Cummins diesel engine. It uses its hydraulic arms to lock into a DOT-ready implement and lift it onto its platform. The operator creates a GPS path or “flight plan” with the system’s specialized computer program. This flight plan is comprised of a series of geographical waypoints — or dots — which the unit follows as it covers a field. (The machine’s name comes partly from that but is also a tribute to Beaujot’s mother Dorothy, who was often called Dot.)

“Basically everything DOT really needs will be controlled through a tablet,” said Owen Kinch, field research manager with SeedMaster who has overseen the development of its software. “That tablet will be your portal into the DOT system. The work area or field boundaries will be defined from that tablet. Once that flight path is created, it’s sent to DOT itself and communicated through a local Wi-Fi network included with DOT.”

The machine’s computer will calculate the complete travel path in less than a second, said Kinch, laying out every turn around sloughs, power poles, and headlands.

“The farmer can change the A to B heading set point for the field and the travel path is updated in real time, showing the farmer how that affects the overall time to complete the field so he can choose the most efficient path,” said Kinch.

The unit is programmed to stop for an object as small as one square foot.

“We’re using similar sensors to what autonomous cars are using to go down four-lane highways,” said Beaujot. “We have a lot of overkill in terms of being able to recognize different objects on farmland.

“If it deviates from its path at all we give it a factor of two or three feet and it just stops the unit and buzzes the operator through the tablet to check it out.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean farmers will have to drive out to their fields five times a day to, say, pick up a rock. Multiple cameras mounted on the DOT will stream high-resolution video to the tablet, allowing the operator to override a stoppage if it’s a false alarm.

“Obviously we don’t want them making unnecessary trips out into the field,” said Kinch. “There will be multiple cameras so the operator can scroll through all of the cameras and be 100 per cent confident that it is safe to proceed. From the user interface they will have pause, play, and stop buttons for the autonomous missions.”

More implements coming

DOT will be compatible with SeedMaster implements and a number of manufacturers from around the world are interested in developing their own DOT-ready implements, Beaujot said. SeedMaster is collaborating with them — a smart move as buy-in from other equipment makers will likely be critical to the machine’s acceptance in the marketplace.

“We share with them our engineering drawings and advice but they have to pay for their own modifications and supply any specific software or hardware that is specific to their device,” he said.

“The interest is coming way faster than we can handle it. We haven’t even had time to visit with all of the companies that have shown interest. It’s really exciting.”

DOT has potential applications in other industries and that’s drawn interest, too, said Beaujot.

“When the guys were at Agritechnica in Germany, an owner of a lumber mill in Chile had flown to Germany for the show just to talk to us about DOT. He’s using a tractor to move logs from a storage location to his mill. It’s a two-kilometre-long route… DOT would make a huge difference to him — saving on the cost of the unit a bit but mostly on labour and efficiency.”

Beaujot envisions a number of ways other industries could mould DOT to their own needs.

“For example, a power company could develop a rig with all the geo-referenced locations for power poles and have it go ahead and drill them out and analyze the soil quality at the same time,” he said. “It has so many record-keeping capabilities.”

Hitting the road

So when will DOT go on sale?

Select producers in the Regina area will get the first ones this year. Buyers who put down a refundable deposit will be first in line when the platform is given a wider release in 2019.

“We make that deposit refundable because we don’t know exactly when we’re going to be ready,” said Beaujot. “They can ask to stay on the list, or ask to be removed and get their money back at any time. If things are going well we can build quite a number for 2019 and then many more again for 2020.”

DOT also needs to be approved for travel on public roads. Its wheels turn sideways so it can travel lengthways and Beaujot said SeedMaster hopes to piggyback on allowances currently being made for autonomous cars.

“We don’t see any roadblocks,” he said. “As far as road use and other public property movement in autonomous mode, I think it will happen as quickly as autonomous cars because we can prove very quickly that it’s safer than an autonomously driven car.

“That’ll take a few years possibly, but there are lots of other methods of moving from farm to farm that are controlled by the farmer, such as loading on trailers.”

The post Meet DOT: the self-driving power implement appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Norbert Beaujot thinks they will embrace being freed from the tractor cab.

“At one end of the scale you get the young, 35- to 40-year-old farmer who really wants to get going with anything new and high tech,” said Beaujot, developer of the DOT Autonomous Power Platform, a self-driving machine with no cab.

“But at the other end we have farmers who are 80 years old saying they’re too old to get up and down from the tractor, but they still have a passion for agriculture. This would give them a way of still utilizing their brains and less of their brawn.”

The human element is a big part of the DOT story, said Beaujot.

“I sat on a panel in Alberta recently and farmers’ biggest complaint was they were working like slaves for that month and a half of seeding and month and a half of spraying and harvest, and they didn’t have a life,” he said.

“Regardless of the size of their farms, it seems that they try to make do with what they have within their family unit to start with and work them to a level that not too long ago we would have called slavery. They work themselves to that level, too.

“But with autonomous units there are moments, at least, where a farmer might be able to stand in a corner of the field and go through a spelling lesson with his son or teach his daughter how to pitch or whatever. You can program the unit to go at night and not worry about going to bed a little earlier and stuff like that.”

There would, of course, be major concerns about a driverless machine somehow going off on its own. But like the proponents of driverless cars, Beaujot is convinced multiple fail-safe systems can eliminate that risk.

As well, he said early discussions with insurance providers have been positive, with one predicting the technology will save lives because it will significantly reduce farm accidents.

Self-driving equipment may also open up farming to a more diverse group of individuals.

“Overall, most of the work that’s done on the farm still has to be done,” said Beaujot. “But it eliminates much of the ‘sitting there, doing nothing’ labour like sitting on the tractor once the auto steer has kicked in.

“If we can remotely monitor and do all the programming required then it eliminates that kind of labour. It shifts some of the labour to family members or other personnel who may not be equipped physically to handle sitting on the tractor for 16 hours. These people can all of a sudden take part in different aspects of farming.”

That appeals to Peace Country grain grower Brianne Brault.

“In the springtime we don’t have hired help, so instead of my husband having to run the seed drill for 18, 20 hours a day, the DOT could be seeding a good portion of the land.”

But are farmers ready?

It may be a leap too far too soon for many.

About 75 per cent of producers recently surveyed about autonomous technology said they would not be ready to use it for at least another three to five years.

Moreover, only four per cent considered it a high investment priority, according to a survey of 432 farmers across the Prairies conducted for Glacier FarmMedia (the parent company of Alberta Farmer).

Fear of losing a family and community connection to farming as well as a simple love of being out in the field were among the reasons for producer skepticism.

But Saskatchewan farmer Justin Kelly thinks this resistance is likely temporary — a natural human reaction to something new and different, especially to technology that hasn’t even yet hit the early-adopter stage.

“I think that’s a typical scenario of guys being scared of change,” said the grain grower from Cut Knife, an hour’s drive southwest of Lloyd­minster.

“They’re going to realize very quickly that they are interested. I think you need to be pretty open minded with these new technologies, which is something we’ve seen in the past.”

And while Beaujot envisions people freed from driving machinery taking up new tasks, Kelly sees autonomous machinery helping him to deal with his biggest farm management challenge: manpower.

“That’s the hardest part of my job, managing people,” said Kelly, who joined the family operation after earning an agriculture degree in 2014. “I think that’s something most people would see value in, in one of these autonomous machines.”

The post Are you ready to step out of the cab forever? appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Researchers at Harper Adams University in Shropshire, England, along with a U.K. precision ag company successfully grew a crop using only automated machines as their farmhands.

The “Hands-Free Hectare” pro-ject produced a 74-bushel-per-acre spring barley crop without ever having a human step foot on the field. Everything from planting, fertilizing, spraying, and harvesting was accomplished using small and simple machinery modified with automated technology.

Autonomous farming on a commercial scale isn’t far away, according to Jonathan Gill, a drone pilot and robotics engineer on the project.

“The adoption of automated systems is going to come a lot quicker than we anticipate,” Gill said at the Farming Smarter conference here last month, adding he expects to see farmers using the technology in five to seven years.

“Everybody thinks it’s way off into the future. I really wanted to show that the capabilities were there now.”

All of the programming on the equipment was done using software codes readily available through open-sourced communities on the internet. Within the hectare, several drones and a ground scout rover performed duties as agronomists. The drones whizzed around taking aerial imaging of the field, relaying valuable crop information back to the researchers.

“I’ve learned so much about how a drone system can work with agriculture,” said Gill. “It’s great because you can always go back to that imagery and data to quantify what you’ve seen.”

Drone imagery not only allowed the researchers to evaluate the growth of the crop and how the autonomous machines were doing, but also highlighted areas needing further inspection. That job was given to the ground scout rover, which could take close-up photos and also scoop up soil samples. A “real-life” agronomist would then get to work analyzing soil, weed, and plant root information along with the number of tillers found on the barley, said Gill.

“I think the agronomist in the future will be using more ground-based rover systems and drones to capture more data that they can analyze in a bunch, in comparison to just doing it by themselves,” he said.

Growing a small one-hectare crop autonomously certainly does not compare to how growers produce large-scale crops today, but Gill said he believes producers need to shift their mindset from big to small. Using fleets of smaller machines working together in swarms has advantages over today’s super-sized tractors, combines, and implements, he said.

“This has some amazing benefits. You’ve got reduced compaction and improved resolution that actually allows us to have a margin gain.”

He pointed to the autonomous tractor system, which set them back about $60,000.

“Now I can buy a few good tractors — probably about nine — for the same price as one large system,” said Gill. “If I can run those together in a fleet, maybe I can actually start doing some interesting things around that.”

One of the biggest challenges for autonomous farming is communication capacity. Many rural areas lack the necessary Wi-Fi coverage that enables the autonomous equipment to communicate effectively.

“As soon as you’ve got that, we’ve got things nailed,” he said.

Although the adoption of autonomous farming will require a major shift in thinking in the agricultural industry, change is necessary because per-acre productivity must increase to feed a rapidly expanding global population, he said.

“The only way we can actually create the step change of increasing productivity within our farmland is by doing something different,” said Gill.

The Hands-Free Hectare researchers have now moved on to their next project (a winter wheat crop) and will be fine tuning their methods by collecting even more in-depth crop info to determine the best ways to increase yield.

To keep up to date on their progress, see handsfreehectare.com or follow them on Facebook (@HandsFreeHectare) or Twitter (@FreeHectare).

The post The automated future has arrived, says robotic farming expert appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Funding from venture capitalists and others totaled US$1.8 billion through the first six months of the year, down 20 per cent from a year earlier, while the number of deals rose seven per cent to 307, ag investment platform AgFunder said.

The pullback was in line with the broader venture capital market, it said.

The decline also comes as weak grain prices put pressure on farmers’ incomes and corporate profits.

Investment slipped in the drones and robotics and food e-commerce categories, while soil and crop technology experienced an uptick.

The dip in ag-tech financing follows 2015’s record-high US$4.6 billion investment, according to Ag Funder. The industry wants to use sophisticated tools such as seed traits, drones and weather sensors to drive yields and profits higher.

“It’s an area we’re keenly interested in,” said Matt Bell, principal of Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, whose investments include Harvest Automation, a company that makes mobile robots for tree nurseries.

Near Kitscoty, Alta., farmers may do double-takes later this year as Brian Headon’s self-driving tractor plows his corn fields with the driver’s seat empty.

Headon will spend C$250,000 retrofitting his tractor with a motor system made by Autonomous Tractor Corp. (ATC) that will allow it to drive by itself, using a global positioning system.

“To not even have an operator in there almost makes me more comfortable,” said Headon, who is also a Western Canada distributor for ATC. “Because I’ve taken away the human aspect.”

The need for safeguards is an obstacle to widespread adoption of self-driving tractors, said Matt Rushing, vice-president of product management at Agco Corp.

“As we start to take the operators off these machines, you’re going to have questions about, ‘Can the machines go rogue?'” Rushing said.

California-based Blue River Technology expects “smarter” machines to catch on steadily.

Farmers use its “See + Spray” technology on 10 per cent of U.S. lettuce fields, said Ben Chostner, vice president of business development at Blue River, whose investors include Monsanto and Syngenta.

The box-shaped robot, pulled behind a conventional tractor, pinpoints weeds to douse with a lethal chemical.

“People have been dreaming of Jetsons-like futures since the ’50s,” Chostner said. “The technology is really starting to emerge.”

— Rod Nickel is a Reuters correspondent covering the agriculture and mining sectors from Winnipeg. Additional reporting for Reuters by Meredith Davis in Chicago.

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