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.

Forgive the scattered nature of this week's Actuator. No big, overarching monologs this week -- just a handful of things I've been thinking about lately that I'd like to get down on paper. I suppose that's one of the perks of doing a weekly newsletter-- it forces you to flesh out some bigger ideas. Point number one is failure. Ingrained in the American psyche (as I'm sure is the case with many other cultures around the world) is an inability to reckon with our mistakes.

Early this week, tractor maker John Deere said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation, an agricultural trade group, promising to make it easier for farmers to access tools and software needed to repair their own equipment. The deal looked like a concession from the agricultural equipment maker, a major target of the right-to-repair movement, which campaigns for better access to documents and tools needed for people to repair their own gear. But right-to-repair advocates say that despite some good points, the agreement changes little, and farmers still face unfair barriers to maintaining equipment they own. Kevin O'Reilly, a director of the right-to-repair campaign run by the US Public Interest Research Group, a grassroots lobbying organization, says the timing of Deere's deal suggests the company may be trying to quash recent interest in right-to-repair laws from state legislators. In the past two years, corn belt states including Nebraska and Missouri, and also Montana, have considered giving farmers a legal right to tools needed to repair their own equipment. But no laws have been passed.

A John Deere autonomous tractor is on display at CES 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. A John Deere autonomous tractor is on display at CES 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Like many parts of modern life, tractors have gone high-tech, often running on advanced computer systems. But some manufacturers are tight-lipped about how these electronics work, making it difficult or nearly impossible for farmers and independent repair shops to diagnose and fix problems with the equipment. An agreement by John Deere may finally give farmers a greater hand in repairing the company's products.

As the global population soars past 8 billion people, the world faces a conundrum: There are more of us to feed, but our food needs to be grown on the same amount of land, if not less. At CES 2023, John Deere is pushing for a future in which farming relies ever more on sensors and machine learning technologies to meet those needs. When you add in the realities of a changing climate that is shifting growing seasons and making weather patterns less predictable, it's clear that the farm of the future will require radical change. John Deere's latest foray into high-tech agriculture is a sensor-driving robotic technology called ExactShot that's designed to reduce fertilizer use by as much as 60%, saving farmers money and slashing the amount of excess chemicals that go into the ground. John Deere is bringing more robots into the farm field with new technology that can precisely fertilize individual seeds. Instead of shooting a steady stream of fertilizer into the soil over the seeds as they're planted in rows by machinery, the company's ExactShot technology uses sensors and robotics to send out timed bursts of fertilizer that coat individual seeds, leaving the spaces between them fertilizer-free.

The machines are coming for your crops--at least in a few fields in America. This autumn John Deere, a tractor-maker, shipped its first fleet of fully self-driving machines to farmers. The tilling tractors are equipped with six cameras which use artificial intelligence (ai) to recognise obstacles and manoeuvre out of the way. Julian Sanchez, who runs the firm's emerging-technology unit, estimates that about half the vehicles John Deere sells have some AI capabilities. That includes systems which use onboard cameras to detect weeds among the crops and then spray pesticides, and combine harvesters which automatically alter their own setting to waste as little grain as possible.

Agricultural drones, self-driving tractors and seed-planting robots are among the innovations that could be key to future food supplies, as autonomous farming promises to produce more crops with less effort and less impact on the environment. Global farming shortages are affecting food chains globally. Last year the National Farmers' Union (NFU) in the UK wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson asking for the implementation of a'Covid Recovery Visa' to alleviate labour shortages across the supply chain. Seasonal worker visa scheme has been extended until end of 2024. The extension of the scheme was a key lobbying ask by the NFU There will be 30,000 visas available this year with potential to increase by 10,000 if necessary Find out more https://t.co/gsBU8Nca6W

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. The heat of July is upon us, which also means we're exactly halfway to 2023. So, it seems like a good time to pause and ask: What are the biggest AI trends so far in mid-2022? The colossal AI trend that all other AI trends serve is the increased scale of artificial intelligence in organizations, said Whit Andrews, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner Research. That is, more and more companies are entering an era where AI is an aspect of every new project.

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.