Is a self-driving tractor in your future?

[smstonypoint]

Here's an interesting article about technological progress in commercial agriculture:Tractor for Modern Farm Features Everything But the Farmer - Bloomberg

Steve

 

[4570Man]

No. If I wanted to sit inside i'd pay someone to come do my work.

 

[jenkinsph]

No, I enjoy my seat time/quality time.

 

[CADplans]

No, I enjoy my seat time/quality time.

I JUST purchased a 2016 Honda CR-V,,, it is almost self-driving. WOW!!
Push a button, the car will stay in lane with no assistance,,, and it has cruise control speed matching.

I would LOVE to have a tractor with these features,,, seat time, AND no work,, the best of both!! :thumbsup:

Now,, I gotta learn how to use Facebook, so I have something to do while I am "driving" the new car!! :confused2:

:laughing:

 

[MrFoPow]

Lol no.

 

[CCWKen]

I agree, it's not for me. I enjoy the seat time, the dust, the pollen, the flying chaff, the birds following me around with the cutter and the hawks following them.

I guess I won't mention wanting to add GPS to my tractor so I can keep my rows straight though. :ashamed: I'd have it already if I could find one that doesn't insist on showing me 3-D Cartoons of the roads around here.

I tried my DeLorme PN-40 and it works good but the screen is too small. If I could just find a large screen version of a hiking GPS, I'd be all set.

 

[CADplans]

I guess I won't mention wanting to add GPS to my tractor so I can keep my rows straight though. :ashamed:

When I was planting soybeans for my BIL,, I ALWAYS told him there were MORE beans in a crooked row,, than a straight row!!

:laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

I JUST purchased a 2016 Honda CR-V,,, it is almost self-driving. WOW!!
Push a button, the car will stay in lane with no assistance,,, and it has cruise control speed matching.

I would LOVE to have a tractor with these features,,, seat time, AND no work,, the best of both!! :thumbsup:

Now,, I gotta learn how to use Facebook, so I have something to do while I am "driving" the new car!! :confused2:

:laughing:

A friend of mine just bought one of those. She loves it. Her husband turns all of it off. :laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

Here's an interesting article about technological progress in commercial agriculture:Tractor for Modern Farm Features Everything But the Farmer - Bloomberg


Steve

A friend of my wife farms around 8000 acres with her family. Her husband says during planting season, he is basically there to turn the tractor around at the end of the field, and that's about it. He turns it around, pushes a button, sits back, crosses his arms and tries to stay awake while it plants all the way to the end of the field, regardless of terrain. It stops at the end and makes a sound. He turns it around and repeats. He's only there to provide a dead-man function should something malfunction.

And that's what I'd worry about with any large piece of machinery, like a tractor, a train, a semi on the road, etc... something can and will go wrong eventually.

 

[oosik]

I agree MossRoad. Unless you have extensive experience with "the system" - are you sure that the manual override will work? I have this wild picture of a large acreage farmer - sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop - he has some form of GPS overview of his robotic tractor out in the field doing its job. This picture changes as the robotic tractor suddenly makes a turn and heads off towards the dealership( Zippo is going home). As this overall picture fades - you see the farmer frantically pounding, with both fists, on the laptop and getting ZERO results.

The next installment of this mini-series will air soon.

 

[TheMan419]

I think for large farming operations it might be feasible to automate a large portion of the tractor's work. For us small CUT and SCUT guys the work is too variable.

 

[jaydee325]

I spoke to some technisions that work on remote operated nuclear fuel handling equipment. They had worked a pilot project back in the 90's where they had equipped a harvester with remote operating capability. The plan was to have 5 harvesters working a field with on operator located in a remote located facility. Much like military drones that are operated by pilots in the US and the drones over the middle east.

The technology is there, it is just now becoming cost effective to deploy it in the agriculture industry.

 

[sixdogs]

For big farms, remote will be everywhere and 5,000 acre farms will be 12,000 acre farms. For me and most of us? Nah. It's more about the smell of the greasepaint and roar of the crowd than getting things done in a hurry. Heck, we're trying to slow things down.

Even a cab takes me away from the smell of spring and the breezes of September.

 

[STx]

I agree, it's not for me. I enjoy the seat time, the dust, the pollen, the flying chaff, the birds following me around with the cutter and the hawks following them.

I guess I won't mention wanting to add GPS to my tractor so I can keep my rows straight though. :ashamed: I'd have it already if I could find one that doesn't insist on showing me 3-D Cartoons of the roads around here.

I tried my DeLorme PN-40 and it works good but the screen is too small. If I could just find a large screen version of a hiking GPS, I'd be all set.

Tray a marine chartplotter. The GPS is pretty accurate and there aren't any road maps loaded into it so, you'll just get a blank screen showing your track lines.

 

[jenkinsph]

Automation in field tractors and spray rigs is growing at a rapid rate from what I see. For row crops I am sure it is handy to have this repeatable tracking following the rows with high position accuracy. No way a human can have this degree of accuracy following the rows with precision.

For those of us who are doing various jobs without need or want of a preprogrammed route it isn't as beneficial.

 

[jenkinsph]

Tray a marine chartplotter. The GPS is pretty accurate and there aren't any road maps loaded into it so, you'll just get a blank screen showing your track lines.

I would think it is a matter of which maps you load in the gps. Heck I live in New Mexico in the mountains and my combination fish finder/chart plotter shows a lot of detail when parked at home. My older Lowrance units are 10 years old with 7 inch screens and I often find they have too much information with the enhanced maps. This older equipment has an accuracy of 7 to 10 ft which is good enough for my uses. Some of the new field and row crop systems are less than an inch error.

 

[CCWKen]

Tray a marine chartplotter. The GPS is pretty accurate and there aren't any road maps loaded into it so, you'll just get a blank screen showing your track lines.

I looked at those. Seems like anything with "marine" attached to the name is 3-50 times the price. But it comes with a fish finder. It's not maps I dislike. It would be great if they had maps. I haven't found any GPS units, except for hiking, that will display maps. They all show those silly cartoon images, not maps.

I was in Walmart with cash in hand ready to buy one that would show maps. I asked the guy there if any of them displayed maps instead of the cartoons and he had the deer-in-the-headlights look. I suspect he thought I was just some old senile fart. I felt like asking him if he has ever seen a road map. :mur: I just walked away thanking him for his time.

 

[CCWKen]

I just thought of something. Has any one just loaded Topo maps into a GPS? Will it display the data? Or is that specific only to DeLorme or handheld units?

 

[jenkinsph]

I just thought of something. Has any one just loaded Topo maps into a GPS? Will it display the data? Or is that specific only to DeLorme or handheld units?

Not sure what you mean by silly cartoon images? Most of the gps mapping I have used is for marine use and does show water depths and the altitude is in a window on the unit for the present location. The maps are not cartoon images imo. There are many different types of maps available to download, sd cards on disk.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

Here's an interesting article about technological progress in commercial agriculture:Tractor for Modern Farm Features Everything But the Farmer - Bloomberg

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Steve

WOW, full circle... NO ROPS !!!