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Satellite Driven Farming Equipment
ravenousbugblatter writes "An article at CNN discusses how Australian scientists are using GPS to automatically drive tractors and other farming equipment on predetermined tracks. The technology is encouraged because it can prevent water loss associated with the repeated compaction of soil from heavy farming equipment."
I, for one, welcome our new tractor overlords.
Mike
It's the beginning of the Redneck Skynet!
"Do not hold strong opinions about things you do not understand."
They can't control the genetically modified crops with GPS. Then you wouldn't have to worried about your crops becoming infected with someone's IP.
This seems very cool and everything but I wonder how "automatic" these are and do they have any collision detection. I can't help but picture the tractor going along, hitting a kangeroo and then all hell break loose. Never underestimate the unexpected
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Repeated compaction and water loss might be a problem, but just wait until one of these badboys gets out of hand and ends up mowing down some precious kangaroo farm. Then we'll see who gives a damn about how compact their soil is.
Just you wait.
Posting as directed.
Does it detect when people or animals are in the way?
As they say, as you reap so will you sow.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Now they'll have to figure out how to prevent property loss associated with the repeated compaction of buildings from heavy misguided farming equipment...
This is a very bad idea. I hear GPS gives coords. backwards in the land down under. =P
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Couldn't the same thing be achived by simply not driving in the ruts?
-- I stole this sig off some old git
during the war, my acura GPS would be off by a 1/5th of a mile or so... watch out for tractors gone wild in your backyard.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
...Possibly this can explain those crop circles coming in from outer space...
This innovation should advance the artistry of crop circles immesurably. No longer must we risk capture and incarceration in persuit of out artistic dreams. Now our wildest imaginings can be realized all from the comfort of our satelite relay stations.
I offer a $100K reward to the first hack who can build me am etch-a-sketch driven combine.
They have already been using GPS to distribute seed/fertilizer/pesticide/etc. in varying amounts in a given field for quite some time. Now they are just letting it drive I guess.
I'd hear the phrase "space age tractors" in my lifetime... but we've reached such great technological innovation I marvel at future possibilities.
This could also be a great help to reduce fatigue related accidents on farms. I have friends that are farmers and during harvest times they routinely work 18+ hours driving harvesting machinery. Often a worker falls asleep at the wheel and has caused thousands of dollars in damage, not to mention the potential for human injuries or death. These tractors could keep these routine tasks safer and maybe in the long run cheaper too.
GPS has been used in farming for a decade, and is fantastic for saving $$$ on fertilizers (liquid) and other farming tasks.
If it automatically categorizes collection rates, bakes bread, and has a SheepTracker de-collision GPS system energy> then I want one! And it better be yellow!
:-)
Oh, and do they come with a free keyring, Sir?
And what about a free laser to automatically kill anything not wearing a GPS tracker. Ah, technology
Does it account for when a tornado is near?
What good is this if some 14 year old rural Kansas kid can drive already with a farmers permit?
How do those water-wheely thingys work that are on a pivot axis?
Alas, we may see Darth Vader controlling farming equipment with his tractor beam.
:)
Man, I can't wait until they use this to make a bigger version of Robot Wars.
I was looking at this, and despite the funny jokes about a redneck skynet, and all hail the rise of the john deer overlords, I do have a couple serious questions.
In kansas a lot of the farmed land in the north western parts of kansas is non-uniform. People tend to have this idea of kansas as being a flat area, but the land is actually quite hilly in the western parts.
What happens if a tractor slips or loses traction? Or do the tractors simply not operate when it is muddy? How much error detection and fixiing do these tractors have. What happens if it finds itself on a part of a field it shouldnt be on, IE its transmitter goes out for a short period of time due to electrical disturbance (say freak lightning or something else).
Does the tractor drive across tilled land to get back to the spot (possibly destroying crops) or does it know to re-orient itself, drive along the right path, and then proceed about its task.
What happens if there is a hardware failure, is it possible to set a new tractor right where the last one set off, or does it need to go through the entire process again?
these things werent answered very well in the article, but are very obvious questions i think that should pop up to someone who read the article.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
My former boss worked on something like this years ago, although if I recall correctly, it was based on dead reckoning and computer vision, not GPS.
Hmm, what happens when Gulf War III starts, and the US turns SA back on? (Selective Availability, undetectable errors added to readings). Could be interesting...
As great is this might be to farmers in australia, my question is how long will it take to automate my lawn care?
It's great fun to spend half a day getting drunk to ignore extream heat while mowing your lawn, but i'll bet people would buy lawnmowers that would do it for you.
This might also eliminate that neighbor that has the fortitude to wake up at 7:00 am on saturday to cut his lawn.
----
Squirrel
I wonder how soon we'll see an automated lawnmower for ordinary yards and lawns. I've seen the vacuum cleaner that senses obstacles, allowing it to vacuum a room unattended. Seems like mowing a lawn wouldn't be too much different. Of course, you'd have to define boundaries, because, unlike an indoor room, there might not be solid walls at the edge of the lawn.
Picture this. Billy and Sally sneak in to the field for a little hanky panky in the chest high throngs of wheat.
[Distant whhhrrring getting louder.]
Billy: oh! oh! uh.... what's that noise?
Sally: I don't know.
[they stand up]
B&S: Ack! The cleaners!
[They run for their lives lest they be chopped up by a combine!]
How would this system prevent death the way a real diver would?
Better hope there are no freak storms...
.. I said Stop!
Stop!
I used to work in a farm and I can say that adding altitude can give you a whole new perspective about what's going on in your fields. Over the years, there have been a number of attempts at using images gathered from airplanes and satellites to enhance scouting
These images provided some interesting views, but were never timely enough to be useful for making management decisions. Plus, the equipment was not readily available to make a pass when you needed it made.
The only option growers had for aerial scouting that provided immediate information was to learn to fly themselves. For most, the cost of flying lessons and airplanes meant that wasn't a very practical option.
Now new technology is opening the door for more immediate, more useful aerial information about your crops. And if you just want to fly over your fields to see how they look from above, that's becoming easier and more affordable, too.
After years of promise that satellites would revolutionize crop scouting, recent developments are turning promise into reality.
Aerial photos can be especially useful for mapping fields in remote areas. A group of ranchers and groups interested in resource management in Wyoming have been working together the past five years to gather aerial images of rangeland in areas that are not readily accessible by ground.
It can be used like in WHIPP program, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Lake DeSmet Conservation District are using aerial imagery to map leafy spurge locations in a 54,000-acre area.
Leafy spurge is a perennial noxious weed that's spreading on rangelands. Cattle won't eat it and herbicides provide inconsistent control so they're trying to develop an integrated weed management program.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
I work for Cat dealer and I was told about this some months ago by our Agriculture Manager. It's already offered in the Challenger MT700 models. In fact there are already quite a few in operation. And oh by the way, John Deere (enemy!), is also offering it in some models.
Depending on how much you want to spend on these tractors you can have an accuracy down to 8 inches per pass in the field.
Of course when he told me this all I could think of was Evil Plan #234.
1. Hack the Omnistar system.
2. Assume control of all Challenger tractors in Indiana.
3. Plow under Terre Haute.
Hey we all have our own little dreams...
I'm holding out for Farm-driven satellite equipment.... dust your crops from space!
the famous Japanese Band, "Space Combine".
h tm l
http://www.soundinfo.jp/artist/s/space_combine.
They were doing this probably ten years ago. Of course growing up on the farm you hear about that kind of stuff.
I come from a long line of farming folk. I've farmed with my folks, they farm, their folks farmed with other farming folks....
Modern farming folks, armed with this system will need fewer folks around the farm. Fewer folks in the area means a smaller demand for services, so more folks will leave. Finally, fewer and fewer folks will fill the rural landscape.
Will this technology be the nail in the coffin of rural life in the midwestern states, requiring only a few folks to farm for everyone?
What happens to the rest of the folks in more populated states when the system crashes and there are too few farmers to farm fields the hard way?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Gaah! It's too hot in Finland! The computer hall I'm in is fortunately air-conditioned, so I guess I've got to stay here and post stuff all night long to survive. Oh, the humanity!
This story, covered by slashdot last week, is a lot more detailed.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Be careful about how the "Home" button's programmed.
"Ahyl be back...with some beer!"
- The Terminatorsaurus!
It's all fun and games until little Billy and his pals are playing Children of the Corn and get chopped up by a combine or somesuch. A human should probably be left in the loop...
It's all fun and games until Pauly Shore hacks the guidance system and writes "Crawl" in 50 foot cursive letters across the back 40...
--riney
From the article i got the sense these were just modified regular tractors, not some lightwieght version that reduces compaction.
I invite you to go look at any farmer's (try my dad) row crops. The furrows on fields of row crops such as carrot seed and garlic are laser straight, and they travel the same furrows when working the field all season long. Growing up, Dad used to let me try to cultivate a row at the very edge of the field (where it was easy for him to fix) and it was always a disaster. However after years of doing it, my dad and many of the farmers in our area had it down to where you could look all the way down a 1/4 mile field and see only inches of deviation.
Furthermore, even if someone had some wandering furrows, it's just a matter of staying in them when doing work in the field as the crop grows (spraying, etc).
I can see a system that uses lighter machinery or allows few passes over a field in a season, but if we're talking about driving the same tractors by different methods, aside from the convenience, I don't see how it would yield the spectacular result quoted. Unless they were comparing their tractors to one driven by complete novices who wander all over the field (too much Fosters?)
You know what?
So the farmer rides around in his remotely-piloted tractor/combine/whatever all day, and since he doesn't have to steer, he can just sit in there in his air conditioned vehicle drinking beer and watching DVDs. Sounds nice! It's almost enough to make one become a farmer...except for all the alien abductions and their anal probes and heyheyhey that hurts me!
The downside to this automation: It makes the premise of Maximum Overdrive that much more plausible. I mean, if it was just confined to homocidal soda machines, that'd be one thing, but this makes it possible for SkyNet to mow us down - literally. Automated Soylent Green factories. Eep!
Does everyone who went through the military computer simulator know about the infantry kangaroos?
I've never quite understood why an anal probe would be a bad thing. I mean I'd love to have someone who would probe my colon thoroughly. Aaaah! Even thinking about it makes me erect. Where can I satisfy this urge?!?!
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/start.htm l?pg=6
Now if i can just find a way to inter-link them to SimFarm, I can just stay inside on my computer all day and read Slashdot posts!
One of the biggest farm exporting nations in the world, Australia is at the
... ?
...
forefront of a drive to take broad-scale agriculture back to the precision of
peasant farming.
Doh
So get some peasants to drive the tractors.
No need for satnav. But then again
Oz might have reeely stoopid peasants.
siggy played guitar
Ahh, takes me back to those halcion days of 1984 with the fine (uh, yeah) movie "Runaway".
I recently read an article in MIT's Technology Review discussing something similar. It looks like NASA is working on something similar, and for a similar purpose, although different in implementation. Finally, agriculture is getting into advanced new electronics with great ideas backed by government.
"(Groan) What sort of hole...are we digging ourselves into now with technology?
As they say, as you reap so will you sow."
Mob boss: We have a farm that's doing poorly. See what you can do about it?
Mob enforcer: OK, godfather.
*on the farm*
Mob enforcer: OK father, were's the money?
Priest: I'm sorry my son. I can not say.
Mob enforcer: OK boys let's plant him.
What I want is a way to "train" my lawnmower with a GPS...then once trained (mow one week or two), I could just fuel up the mower and let it do its work...automatically, without me sitting on the thing for 3 hours.
Anything like that out there??
"I'm holding out for Farm-driven satellite equipment.... dust your crops from space! "
Drug dealers are also holding out. Dust your customers from space.
I worked there in 2000 and the best part was the big red button on the front. it was a little odd having my computer space 20 feet from a tractor with gizmos.
When you get out of a specific ride ( I think Space Mountain) they've got some nice displays, one of them with robotic farming equipment being serviced. Pretty precognizent, eh? Or maybe something more sinister? ;)
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00048.htm
Not that one can't dodge a combine (trust me on that one) but...
i used to work for a company that was working with this in the mid 90s. it was called alamo group. they were in Seguin Tx. the local Aggies would tell us about how this was the rage at school.
At least part of the motivation for this research is that Australia generally has the poorest soils in the world. The rocks and soil are so old here that for the most part, there just aren't many nutrients left, since they've been leeched out over the millennia. Consequently, soil degradation, salinity and erosion are big topics here. Slowly our argicultural industry is realising they need to address these issues (with things like GPS tractors) otherwise there wil be no soil left for them to farm.
My brother works for a large seed/research company.
Their tractors have for years been equipped with GPS.
They plot entire fields, and keep a record of things like: average soil moisture content, average amount of nutrients in the soil, elevation changes, and subjective human inputs on conditions, etc...
When they go to plant seed, the computers are connected to the data, and the GPS receiver, and the planter.
When seeds start going into the ground, the seed density AND fertilizer amounts/mixture's are changed on the fly to accomodate the growing conditions of that area of the field, with no operator input.
I have to say I think this is a pretty good idea... but...
Farm machinery and computers just don't mix. It sounded like a great idea when they started to put computers into tractors, but it has been nothing but a nightmare to farmers. Wires get too warm and fry or make contact all the time under the hood blowing out chips, dirt gets into the electronics themselves and causes them to quit working. When this happens, can Mr. Farmer fix it? No, it is like a modern vehicle. Mr. Farmer usually has to pay some programmer from 300KMs away to drive down and fix a $5 computer chip. People have lost days due to down time and at a critical time in the year this can mean tens of thousands of dollars a day, not to mention the cost of getting someone to fix it out to the tractor. The cost and problems these computerized tractors have is why no farmer considers it, or if they do they soon realize their mistake and trade the sucker off quick.
Sounds like a great idea until these automated tractors start shutting down and then you start to see the real cost of this venture. Leave the driving to the farmer. Technology still can't compete against the flesh and blood farmer.
It has been scientifically proven. I refer you to The Annals of Improbable Research, for research that can not, or should not, be reproduced.
Infuriate left and right
I honestly can't see how this will help the farm industry in preventing soil corrosion, seeing as how farmers barely run their tractors over the same area twice. Although the labor benefits are obvious.
You'd think there would be a simpler solution that doesn't implement GPS, kinda like those robot lawn mowers, except smart...
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
I find that fascinating. I was visiting relatives in South Georgia, USA. I was checking out the Roundup Resistant Cotton. Amazing stuff, makes weed control real easy when you can get Herbicide on the crop.
It's crystal clear that advances in Genetics combined with advances in things like automated machinery are gonna make agriculture alot more efficient, and make it where less people have to do the mind numbing work of an agricultural laborer
Cool Stuff
HenryJamesFeltus.com
After reading all the replies, the impact on employment was discussed, but only in relation to farmers. Jeez folks, perhaps you should consider that soon, most heavy equipment will be automated. As well, so will cars and trucks.
... yup, truckers. So, think of the resulting massive unemployment levels that will result from going to autonomous, automated machinery.
...
Quick, what's the number one job for men in North America
By the way, you can already buy robotic vacuam cleaners and lawnmowers.
My advice, start saving your pennies
I work on a farm and have been to field demonstrations of this style of equipment, and we are on the verge of purchasing.
1) The tractors still have drivers, who are aways in the tractor.
They are fitted with a deadmans switch that you have to press every few minutes. If the button isnt pressed, the tractor goes into a hard (either left or right) turn.
2) The driver controls groundspeed, implements, and can override the steering (a pressure sensor in the steering lets the computer detect input from the wheel)
3) They use a beacon for high accuracy, if they lose contact with it it informs you and tells you to stop driving.
4) Most modern tractors use hydraulic steering, so a valve is installed for the gps/controller to interface with
5) Trimble do a fair bit of this sort of stuff, have a look on their site
SafT
I was a bit disappointed by the lack of serious consideration for this technology. I grew up working on a farm, and this type of technology raises some different questions for someone of my background.
1. Labor. Currently tens of thousands of wage workers make their living working these machines. If some day, and I mean some day way into the future, the tilling process is truly automated, what will these often low-education workers do instead? Not to say it is a bad thing to improve the efficiency of an industry, just something to be considered.
2. While I'm sure most of you cannot imagine such a life, I contribute much of my success in the collegiate and business worlds to my upbringing in a farm atmosphere. The number of households leading this type of life is growing smaller at a considerable rate (sorry, no stats...). Will this have a lasting impact of small town America?
3. With the advance in the technology used to grow and harvest crops, how will this affect technological advances in the crops themselves. Europe today is especially resistant in some areas to genetically modified crops. The US is more receptive, but still very cautious. I believe this will happen eventually, but not in the near future.
If you would like to be a leader with a large following...drive slowly down a windy two-lane road
These things currently don't have collision avoidance or good hill-handling capabilities. You still need an operator, although they don't have to do much. Full automation is coming, but it's not really here yet.
... from Trimble Navigation (NASDAQ:TRMB). Have a look at http://http://www.trimble.com/agriculture.html for more details on their agricultural products that allow GPS to guide agricultural machinary.
The cool thing about these systems is you can use them to put in a crop then use the logged positions from the planting to guide future visits to the field to weed, spray etc. The systems guidance is accurate enough to till earth beteen rows without fear of root damage to the crop. The operator can spend their time looking out the rear window admiring how well the system works!
Finally A reason to subscribe ;)
;)
I actually have some experience with this, being that I grew up farming and have several relatives who still do.
#1 These tractors are WAY too expensive for a farmer that plow 1 and 3 hundred acres. the people that are going to use them are the peeple who plow 1 to 3 thousand acres at a time. And these farms always have somebody on hand that can fix a tractor at a moments notice.
#2 farms have been using GPS for years, I have a cousin who is a Crop Duster. Those planes have military grade GPS units on them thanks to the Cotton Industry and the "Boll Weevil Eradication Program". If he strays as much a a foot off course the goverment gets a report of it. and flying 6 feet off of the ground at 100 MPH, in a high performance, turbocharged, custom built and maintained by the pilot, airplane doesn't leave any room for error. Especially when there are power lines that have to be flown under and trees that seem to always be at the end of the field that needs to be sprayed the most.
I for one applaud the use for GPS, since it was usually me at one end of the field measuring over a dozen or so feet and flagging the pilot of the plane so he could line his prop up with me and another person on the other end of the field and start spraying just as he flew over me. Several people have lost heads to this antiquated way of doing things not to mention to all of my family and friends who now have cancer because of the poisons. Luckily, I do not.
#3 Automation must come to farming if it is going to survive. How much do you pay for Catfish in the store? $3.50? $5.00? a pound. I can tell you that those farmers don't make but 45 to 50 cents a pound (in a good year). and it cost 42 cents a pound and two years to raise them. Those farms are now highly automated with oxygen sensors, floating paddle aerators, automated feeders, and backup power generators since most everything runs off of electricty, and in the country, the power goes out frequently. (D&#N AUTOMATED TRACTOR! it just ran over another power pole !!)
#4 NASA is helping out because it is technology that can be transferred to/from other projects. How much do you think the have LEARNED from all those probes sent to Mars and into deep space?.
Remember, It was NASA that came up with the "microwaves as a cooking source", "micro sensors" used in pacemakers, various different forms of plastics and adhesives, "improved manufacturing ideas", along with countless other pantents. (and dont forget "thermal forming cushioned seats" ala Tempur-Pedic(r) )
People want good food, but most don't want to pay good prices for it. That is why a lot of our food comes from Mexico, Central, and South America where the growing time is shorter (time to market) and labor costs are nil. A portion of our seafood comes from China and Viet-nam. where they can pull it out of the water with almost no regulations, and dump it on the open market at a rate below American production costs.
I currently work at John Deere, doing technical support for their "GreenStar" line of precision farming products that were briefly mentioned in that article. I had very little experience with agriculture before I started with John Deere, (I grew up in Iowa, but in Des Moines) but since starting there, I've actually gotten excited (if you can imagine that) about the things that they are doing with their Ag Management Solutions division (their precision farming group.)
It's important to note right now that there are a number of solutions offered by companies other than John Deere, but as I work for them, I am most familiar with their products.
Precision farming system serves three primary purposes:
Obviously, these benefits will not outweigh the costs of precision farming systems during the short-run, or for the small farming operation . . . but for larger operations over the long run, the benefit can be huge. Ultimately it boils down to making farming more efficient and more profitable for the farmer (while providing additional revenue to Deere and Company, of course) and ultimately, this is a good thing.
In addition to John Deere's GreenStar product line, they also offer a product called JDLink, which allows owners to monitor usage of their equipment in the field. (This is really nice if you have a huge farming operation or are in the business of renting equipment.) It's not really precision farming, per se, but it's worth checking out. http://www.jdlink.com/
Of course, what people are doing today is only the beginning. I can't give too much detail, but there is a lot going on at Deere and Company in their precision farming group; it looks as though they believe precision farming in "the next big thing" in farming.
If you are interested in learning more about John Deere's flavor of precision farming, visit the AMS web site (http://www.deere.com/en_US/ag/servicesupport/ams/ index.html) or stop by your local John Deere dealer. While you're at your John Deere dealer, if you're interested in tinkering with some software, pick up a copy of the JDOffice desktop software. It's only about $5.00 and you may get to talk to me when you activate it. ;-)
This could also be a great help to reduce fatigue related accidents on farms. I have friends that are farmers and during harvest times they routinely work 18+ hours driving harvesting machinery. Often a worker falls asleep at the wheel and has caused thousands of dollars in damage, not to mention the potential for human injuries or death.
Okay. Now, for a dose of reality. Ever seen on TV how they have the machines lined up in a row, one after the other? Now, remove the driver, put in a GPS-navigation system. So far so good, right?
Now put yourself 20 feet in front of that cluster of combines. Better run like shit, my friend- because that computer has no clue you're about to get chewed into little bits.
Please help metamoderate.
So this explains the mystery behind crop circles! Aliens, my ass...it's those damned GPS driven tractors! Does the National Enquirer know about this?
Maybe I'm the one who's mistaken here, but with the little knowledge I have on the subject, the writer of this article, and the slashdot community, both look grossly uninformed about GPS in agriculture. I know in my small hometown in Canada, they have been using GPS to guide farm equipment (namely for spreading fertilizers) for at least 5 years now. The equipment is provided by one the largest industrial GPS companies around, Trimble, who has an entire division for agricultural applications, which they dub "AgGPS".
Some of my friends worked on a smaller-scale project for their senior design at Rochester Institute of Technology. Apparently it worked fairly well, even in inclement winter weather!
We have recently received reports that the Al Qaeda remenants are planning to smuggle Tractors of Mass Destruction into the country. We do not want to cause any alarm, but advise citizens to look out for any suspicious unmanned farming equipment moving down 5th Avenue.
No joke, just yesterday, I was standing on the greenwich meridian (a big steel line in the ground in Greenwich England) and my eTrex GPS said that the meridian was about 100 metres away, even after staying in the same spot for about 10 minutes, and it claiming accuracy of 7 metres from 6 satellites.
:>
As handy as GPS is, I don't entirely trust it
... Christmas Island a pretty good place for a space terminal. I'm West Australian. I am a space freak.
What interests me about this story is the notion that with that much accuracy and control over soil degeneration, this technology is ripe for space farming.
Give Australian farmers any piece of equipment designed for super accuracy and high-duration work, and they will find a way to break it, fix it, and make it better. Somehow. Australian farmers have learned many modern lessons - it wasn't so long ago that nobody could figure out how to grow stuff properly on that land. CSIRO and other Aussie science institutes continue to do very interesting stuff in crop research, soil health, water control, etc.
Anyway - about the space thing. When we get into space, and need to start growing food, I'll bet that there will be an interesting market for crop-growing machinery which works in extreme conditions. In fact, if these Aussie robots go into interesting design directions, I would imagine they'd have applications for experimental crop-growth facilities in LEO, soon enough.
Australia is as good a place as any to test all this. It is hot, dusty, and extremely tough land, some of it. Machines that can grow things and survive that environment untended with good control have all sorts of applications.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This design has been tackled recently by a person at my engineering school. The results were good considering it was done with only a few grand. A lot of documentation on how it was completed is posted.
GPS Tractor
MOD PARENT UP!
One of my friends actually worked on these systems.
Beeline sells systems for fitting into all sort of agricultural systems.
They are GPS based with 20cm or 2cm accuracy depending on system.
I don't think the systems are sold as being driverless, but rather hands-free.
gateway has been experimenting with this for years. theres even a few systems already in use in kansas and parts of missouri.
it works *pretty* well *most* of the time...
altho its my understanding that its usually only used on certain *huge* fields with very few obstacles.
It is so amasing how much total CRAP the media puts out. This story is no exception!
First off, driving a tractor is rather boring and even more so when you consider that tilling the soil can take 12 hours per field. So a GPS driven tractor is valuable for one reason and one reason ONLY! It largely removes the need for an operator. Drive by wireless would also do the job and for instance INCO is using this in its underground mines. Surface mining systems are also under development.
The downside of the technology is that if something screws up you literally can have a 20 ton tractor wander into a slough or into your neighbours feilds. Of course, human operators wander into slough's sometimes too in spite of the fact that the water is perfectly obvious as are the consequences. haha.
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Yet the artical states that somehow this is going to reduce soils damage. Why? Where do these idjots get ideas like this? How about salinity? Tilling the soil does not introduce salinity. Irrigation does as do certain fertilizers such as KCl.
It would be really nice if some of the reporters would educate themselves beyond a grade 3 level.