Farm Simulator IRL: Watch Us Control a John Deere Tractor With a Phone From 1,300 Miles Away
We used an iPhone in Las Vegas to start and stop a tractor in Austin, Texas.
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Standing at the John Deere booth at this year's CES in the Las Vegas Convention Center, I pushed the PAUSE button on an iPhone. Thirteen hundred miles away, in the middle of a field outside of Austin, Texas, a giant, bright green, driverless tractor stopped short. I hit RESUME. Seconds later, the tractor started up again. Then, I let go of the iPhone altogether and watched as the tractor resumed tilling the field, all by itself.
John Deere's autonomous tractor technology may have debuted two years ago, but its commercial rollout has been relatively gradual. Using an app on the company's pre-programmed iPhone, we were able to both oversee and drive its autonomous technology-equipped tractor during a demonstration last week.
The breadth of what you can do with the tractor—at least, via the app's controls—isn't huge, but its usefulness as a support tool out in the fields is undeniable.
Driving The Thing
The in-app controls include stopping and resuming the tractor, as well as increasing or decreasing its speed in a straight line and while turning. Speeds in the straights vary from 5 to 12 mph. There are no turning controls because, according to John Deere, it wanted to make the process as simple as possible.
Once a farmer geo-fences the field boundaries (the pink lines on the overhead view), the system cannot navigate itself outside of them, but it can determine its own path (the blue lines) based on how wide the tiller is. So don't expect to see a runaway tractor tearing down a street by itself.
Cameras mounted all over the tractor and inside it provide a 360-degree view of the equipment so the farmer can monitor everything in real time. A perception system checks for obstacles and can stop the tractor if it detects anything.
To start the tractor, simply hit RESUME. To stop, hit PAUSE. To start again, hit RESUME.
The tractor won't begin driving once more immediately though: After hitting resume, the app displays a countdown to when it'll get things moving. In person, the tractor flashes its amber safety lights and beeps repeatedly to warn everyone close by that it will start moving imminently. Again, this is for safety.
Furthermore, say you see something the machine doesn't, or it gets stuck. You can stop the tractor anytime you want, climb into the cab, and manually drive it yourself. That's why it still has a cabin, by the way. The tractor still needs to be driven from field to field, to get fueled up, or utilized for different tasks.
Think of it like a big Roomba. You still need to establish the room the machine will be working in, but once it understands those boundaries, it will systemically cover the area on its own.
Automakers are still struggling with autonomous cars , but John Deere's is truly an empty-driver's-seat, set-it-and-forget-it self-driving system that is commercially available today. Admittedly, though, a field is much easier to work with than a busy city block. It's a closed space with no traffic and not many obstacles. The stakes are lower, for sure, but that doesn't detract from how much time the company's customers will undoubtedly save.
Who Is This For?
First off, this technology isn't meant for the little tractors you might use to cross your one-acre lot with. For now, John Deere is offering it on its large-size 8R production agriculture tractors. The objective is so a customer can remotely pilot the tractor from wherever. And the goal, according to director of product management and user experience Doug Sauder, is to improve the customer's overall quality of life via reduced labor hours.
Sauder said farmers are constantly pressed for time; they work within very tight operating windows, especially during the planting season in the spring and harvesting season in the fall. Paired with a shortage of qualified labor, there's often more work to be done than there are people. With help from an autonomous tractor, a farmer could essentially deploy it in one field while they tend to something else more pressing. John Deere envisions the technology to act as a second shift or a farmer as having one key employee managing multiple machines at once.
As of this writing, the company has paying customers in seven states—mostly in the Midwest regions that do a lot of corn and soy production. Feedback so far, Sauder says, has been good.
The Cost And Future Of Autonomous Farming
Presently, tillage is the only job the technology is programmed to handle—because it's the most straightforward and advantageously timed with the seasons—but John Deere hopes to have a complete autonomous production system supporting every step of the farming process by 2030.
The company has not publicly released final pricing, but spokespeople ballparked such a tractor to run between $600,000 to $700,000, with the autonomous technology implementation adding a further $100,000 on top of that. However, older tractors from the 2020 model year and up can also be retrofitted with the tech. The process should "take only about a day" to complete, according to a 2022 CNET story.
There's no denying how expensive the tractors and autonomous tech are, so cost will definitely be a challenge for certain farmers. The good news is buyers can likely save some money when it comes to repairs, since John Deere finally committed to allowing farmers to fix their own tractors last year ( sorta ), and by perhaps not paying an extra farm hand to drive a tractor for hours on end.
Anxiety over human workers being replaced by machines always accompanies the announcement of advancements in autonomy and artificial intelligence. But these technologies are potential solutions to the legitimate labor crisis plaguing the United States farming industry.
John Deere isn't the first or only company to bring automation to farming. But seeing as it is one of the power hitters of the farm equipment industry, this is a significant step. If there's anything this author has learned from watching both seasons of Clarkson's Farm , it's that extra help is always needed and appreciated, autonomous or not.
I got into cars the way most people do: my dad. Since I was little, it was always something we’d talk about and I think he was stoked to have his kid share his interest. He’d buy me the books, magazines, calendars, and diecast models—everything he could do to encourage a young enthusiast. Eventually, I went to school and got to the point where people start asking you what you want to do with your life. Seeing as cars are what I love and writing is what I enjoy doing, combining the two was the logical next step. This dream job is the only one I’ve ever wanted. Since then, I’ve worked at Road & Track, Jalopnik, Business Insider, The Drive, and now MotorTrend, and made appearances on Jay Leno’s Garage, Good Morning America, The Smoking Tire Podcast, Fusion’s Car vs. America, the Ask a Clean Person podcast, and MotorTrend’s Shift Talkers. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, cooking, and watching the Fast & Furious movies on repeat. Tokyo Drift is the best one.
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