When John Deere debuted its first-ever autonomous tractor at CES 2022, it signaled a new era of AI & robotic farming would soon be upon us. While other companies have been talking about autonomous tractors for some time, it's an altogether different matter when the U.S.'s biggest manufacturer of farming equipment signals that this is the future. Still in the trial phase, early versions of the 8R are now being tested by what the company describes as its "paying test cooperators." But since it won't be long before the final production model of the autonomous tractor is rolling off the production line, I thought it would be a good time to sit down with one of the company's computer vision leads, Chris Padwick, the Director of Computer Vision and Machine Learning at Deere's Blue River Technology division, to get an idea of the how the company got to this point. According to Padwick, since its acquisition by John Deere in 2017, Blue River has helped accelerate the farming equipment giant into precision agriculture with its "see and spray" computer vision technology.

While agricultural equipment manufacturer Deere (NYSE:DE) represents a vital cog in U.S. infrastructure, it may also be the most important artificial intelligence (AI) investment right now. Last year, the company introduced an AI-empowered fully-autonomous tractor that can positively disrupt the agricultural industry. Further, Deere offers exposure to practical AI-integrated applications while delivering on its core relevant business. I am bullish on DE stock. During a press conference at the 2022 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show, Deere revealed its autonomous tractor that stood ready for large-scale production.

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. During CES 2022 in January, John Deere debuted a fully autonomous tractor, powered by artificial intelligence, that is ready for large-scale production. According to a press release, the tractor has six pairs of stereo cameras that capture images and pass them through a deep neural network – that then classifies each pixel in approximately 100 milliseconds and determines if the machine continues to move or stops, depending on if an obstacle is detected. And in March, the Iowa-based company launched See & Spray Ultimate, a precision-targeted herbicide spray technology designed by John Deere's fully owned subsidiary Blue River Technology. Cameras and processors use computer vision and machine learning to detect weeds from crop plants.

Next time you pass a farm where a modern tractor is cruising around a field, take a closer look. While there is a farmer sitting in the cab, the vehicle might be driving itself. That tractor is often operating on auto pilot using semi-autonomous, self-driving technology. While the tractor plows along thanks to features like autosteer and computer-assisted technologies for applying fertilizers or pesticides, the farmer can send work texts or emails, pay bills or even flip through Instagram stories or TikTok videos. For farmers, this kind of efficiency is not a luxury.

Smart farming using AI and IoT is no longer a distant dream, smart farms are here to stay thanks to amazing advancements in AI and IoT devices. Over the past decades, the agriculture sector has undergone significant changes. Today, it's possible to grow plants even in the most hostile climatic regions. Crops are more resistant to insects, weeds, and climate change than ever before. Lastly, it's possible to breed high-yielding farm animals. But despite all these advancements, a large population of the world is still undernourished.

The autonomous tractor is a version of Deere's existing 8R series machine, the largest of which has 410 horsepower. Current 8R users can upgrade their tractors with the autonomous driving system. The Deere tractor, unveiled at the CES 2022 tech conference in Las Vegas, isn't the world's first autonomous tractor. Smaller autonomous tractors are being used in specialty-crop farms. The application of the technology to larger vehicles is just getting started and promises to be highly consequential, according to Aron Cory, research manager for world-wide agriculture at International Data Corp. "The move from conventional tractors to autonomous tractors is going to be comparable from the move from horses to the combustion engine," he said.

Agricultural hardware giant and scourge of right-to-repair advocates everywhere John Deere is ready to show off its finished, fully-autonomous tractor. Here at CES, the company is saying that this unit is going to be put into large-scale production, and will be made available to farmers later this year. When in use, a farmer can set the hardware to work and then leave it running, allowing them to tend to vital work elsewhere. The idea, so the company says, is to help make farming more efficient and more robust in the face of ever-increasing demand and dwindling resources. John Deere's ambitions in this space have been running for some time, and the company was showing off an autonomous tractor at this show in 2019.

Deere & Co. helped mechanize agriculture in 1837 with the first commercially successful steel plow. On Tuesday, the company unveiled a machine that could prove just as transformative: a fully autonomous tractor. John Deere's new 8R tractor uses six pairs of stereo cameras and advanced artificial intelligence to perceive its environment and navigate. It can find its way to a field on its own when given a route and coordinates, then plow the soil or sow seeds without instructions, avoiding obstacles as it goes. A farmer can give the machine new orders using a smartphone app.

But when the heartland needs tech, it still comes to Silicon Valley. On Thursday, John Deere announced that it would acquire Bear Flag Robotics, a Silicon Valley startup that makes fully autonomous tractors for farms, for $250 million. Bear Flag retrofits regular tractors with sensors, control systems, computers, and communications systems needed to operate autonomously. The company's tech lets a lone farmer remotely oversee a fleet of robot tractors autonomously tilling a field. "John Deere putting their stamp on this kind of fully autonomous technology means it's really coming," says George Kantor, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in the use of robots in agriculture.

The industry as a whole is facing huge challenges, from rising costs of supplies, a shortage of labor, and changes in consumer preferences for transparency and sustainability. There is increasing recognition from agriculture corporations that solutions are needed for these challenges. In the last 10 years, agriculture technology has seen a huge growth in investment, with $6.7 billion invested in the last 5 years and $1.9 billion in the last year alone. Major technology innovations in the space have focused around areas such as indoor vertical farming, automation and robotics, livestock technology, modern greenhouse practices, precision agriculture and artificial intelligence, and blockchain. Farm automation, often associated with "smart farming", is technology that makes farms more efficient and automates the crop or livestock production cycle.