Since its Precision Ag Group was started in 1993, John Deere has steadily increased the level of automation in its products, edging further and further forward along the path to full autonomy. It’s now closer than ever to that goal, thanks to technologies being applied across multiple solutions within its Precision Ag portfolio…

John Deere has seven new automation products currently in development, including ExactShot for precise fertilizer placement during planting; Furrow Vision for direct view of seeds as they are planted in furrows; and, on the construction side, Smart Detect for human and object detection behind wheel loaders…

What John Deere is striving toward is “sense and act autonomy,” said Olson. “This is where we really get into machine learning, artificial intelligence, fully autonomous machines. It’s all about a proliferation of sensors, cameras and controllers that are giving data to these systems and a decision is going to be made.”