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There is a lot Talk about bringing Silicon Valley style innovation to the heart of America. But when the heart needs technology, it reaches Silicon Valley.
On thursday John Deere he announced that he would get it Bear Flag Robotics, A Silicon Valley startup that makes fully autonomous farm tractors for $ 250 million.
Bear Flag adapts conventional tractors with the sensors, control systems, computers and communication systems needed to operate autonomously. The company’s technology allows a lone farmer to autonomously supervise the robot tractor’s fleet to cultivate the area.
“Putting a seal on this kind of technology that John Deere is completely autonomous means will really come,” he says. George Office, A robotician at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in the use of robots in agriculture. He added that autonomous tractors are particularly important because the machines are used in various fields of agriculture.
Some tractors are already able to track GPS-guided routes autonomously, but Bear Flag’s technology pulls a person out of the tractor cab completely. It has embraced innovations developed and commercialized through the car company’s car industry. He uses the leader and the computer view not only to navigate, but also to explore the ground behind a tractor.
“We use AI to study the input of sensors that predict failure and can be seen beyond what humans can see,” says Aubrey Donnellan, co-founder and COO of Bear Flag Robotics.
The purchase is the last sign that John Deere, founded in 1837, sees automation. robotics, and Artificial intelligence as a crucial component for the future of agriculture. The equipment manufacturer paid $ 305 million Acquired Blue River Technology, Another Silicon Valley company that made intelligent weeding robots in September 2017.
“For technologists interested in the development and robotics of autonomous vehicles, it’s an area that will develop fairly quickly,” says Daniel Leibfried, John Deere’s director of autonomy and smart solutions.
Machines have long been used in agriculture, but the industry is experiencing a growth in new automation applications, as advances in AI and robotics allow processes to be automated in new ways. Many experts predict that more automation will be needed to meet the growing demand for food and labor shortages and to mitigate the environmental damage that can lead to more intensive farming.
On some farms, drones study crops autonomously to calculate yields or to detect signs of disease. A a growing catalog of robots it can carry out more complex agricultural work in rural areas, including harvesting machines, weeding machines and animal waking machines. Startups like that Iron ox and Bowery food production is being developed using greenhouses that are optimized using sensors, robotics and AI.
Some simple tasks are still left out of robotics. Harvesting grapes or tomatoes, for example, can be an easy (and low-paying) job for humans, but it is very difficult for robots to master.
“Eventually, there will be robots that do things like that, too,” Kantor says. “And they’ll have to tow or integrate it through the autonomous tractor that’s making the Bear Flag.”
Revenues from agricultural robots are expected to grow by 19 percent annually between 2018 and 2026 to $ 16.6 billion, According to Research Drive, business analyst.
Increasing agricultural automation can have an impact on employment. Agriculture still has about 2.6 million U.S. jobs, according to Data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture October 2020.
But Ali Moghimi, An assistant professor at UC Davis, teaches “precision agriculture,” and it could be said that robotics and AI will be taken more slowly than other industries due to the complexity and cyclical nature of agriculture. But he believes automation is inevitable, not only because it can increase productivity, but also because it can help limit environmental damage, such as automatically detecting excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers.
“AI’s latest advances will be game-changing,” in agriculture, Moghimi says. “This is the way we need to go down.”
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