Soon Iowa Farmers Can Run Their Tractors From Their Cell Phones

By 2050, the global population is expected to jump from 8 billion people to close to 10 billion.  A jump like that means farmers need to increase food production to match the increasing food demand by 50 percent with less land and skilled labor.

To help achieve this, John Deere has rolled out their fully automated tractor, which is ready for large-scale production. On Tuesday, the company revealed their fully automated machine that combines Deere’s 8R tractor, TruSet-enabled chisel plow, GPS guidance system, and new advanced technology.

During a media presentation on Tuesday Deere featured Minnesota corn and soybean farmer Doug Nimz, who's shown in the video operating a tractor with his phone.

The thing that excites me the most about autonomy is not being locked in the tractor cab all day. It will just allow me to run my business better because I can just pay closer attention to other tasks

How does it work?

With an autonomous tractor, farmers will only need to transport it to the field and set it up for operation. Using John Deere Operations Center Mobile, farmers are able to monitor the tractor from their cell phones while doing other tasks.

The tractor will have six pairs of stereo cameras, giving it 360-degree obstacle detection and distance calculation.  The camera’s images will be sent through a network that will scan over the images and decide if the tractor with continue on or stop, depending on if there is an obstacle.

The tractor will be available to farmers later this year.