Allows upgrades of older machinery for small farms
Topcon’s has created a Value Line Steering solution for farmers using mid-range tractors on small- to medium-sized farms. It makes autosteering technology — typically used on larger machinery — accessible to a broader range of farmers. Farmers with older or smaller machinery, or small specialty farms, can boost the value of their machinery with the autosteering technology. The integrated system is designed to work across a wide range of applications, machinery and brands. It includes compliance with ISOBUS-UT to offer universal compatibility and ease of use. The package includes a GNSS receiver, electric steering wheel controller, touchscreen console and Horizon Lite software, compatible with front-wheel-steer tractors. Farmers can add local, satellite or RTK correction services such as Topcon’s Topnet Live for enhanced precision. Topcon, topconpositioning.com
Precision agriculture — which promises to reduce inputs of water, fertilizers and pesticides by matching them to variations in soil conditions, thereby reducing environmental impacts, while increasing yields and productivity and reducing fuel consumption —has been around for a long time. This magazine published a few issues of a special supplement on the subject more than 20 years ago. In recent years, the convergence of enabling technologies — including improved satellite-based sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles, ground-based sensors, and GNSS corrections services — and greater demand has made agriculture one of the largest users of GNSS.
Compared to autonomous vehicles on public roads, autonomous tractors, sprayers, combines, and other farming equipment pose much lower safety concerns, because they need not deal with the vagaries of traffic, accidents and construction. They also are not subject to the kind of signal occultation and multipath that is the bane of GNSS navigation in urban canyons and, at least for now, they are not at significant risk of jamming or spoofing. However, they face other challenges, including severe roll and pitch due to bumpy terrain, some multipath from silos and other tall structures, occasional signal interference, occasional dense tree canopies, the requirement to maintain exact heading at very low speeds, the need to receive corrections over very large areas, complicated weather conditions (including rain, fog and dust clouds) and, like every other sector, cost constraints.
Despite this, guidance for farm vehicles must be consistently accurate at the decimeter-level, lest the machines damage the valuable crops that they are designed to service.
In the following articles, seven companies briefly describe their advancements in precision agriculture:
Intelligent navigation-based automation is redefining the farmer’s humble tractor to robotic status. This results in significantly faster field preparation and cropping and dramatically reduced labor costs.
Any autonomous vehicle requires the highest levels of navigational accuracy, control and safety. For farming applications, this typically means maintaining exact heading at very low speeds, often over bumpy terrain. These requirements make using the right navigational equipment critical to success. The key challenge is maintaining precise placement and movement of the tractor relative to crop rows and field boundaries. Failure to maintain precision can cause rows to be damaged or planted seedlings to be uprooted. The typical accuracy required for precision farming is position to within a decimeter (10 cm) — well beyond basic GNSS. This requires real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning and advanced signal processing.
Sabanto, a U.S.-based farming as a service (FaaS) start-up, was facing this exact challenge. The company needed a precise and reliable navigation solution for its fleet of driverless tractors deployed in a growing number of U.S. states, including Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota.
“The reliability of Advanced Navigation’s GNSS Compass gave us the peace of mind required to operate fully autonomously from Spring to Fall of 2020,” explained Craig Rupp, CEO of Sabanto.
Thanks to its dual-antenna GNSS and RTK corrections, the GNSS Compass can offer high-accuracy heading. Accurate position is maintained using real-time correction data, delivered from nearby ground base stations, resulting in near-centimeter accuracy under the most demanding conditions.
Furthermore, the GNSS Compass includes an integrated inertial navigation system (INS) to ensure consistent position accuracy of the tractor in the event of degraded or lost signals from GNSS satellites from heavy canopy or steep terrain. Roll, pitch and heading data also improve the stability of the autonomous platform over difficult terrain.
Sabanto engineers can now deploy and remotely monitor their fleet of autonomous tractors 24/7. Operators can simply pre-program the itinerary and field boundaries, as well as when to lift and lower tillers, resulting in the tractors planting up to two hectares (five acres) per hour.
John Deere has revealed a fully autonomous tractor ready for large-scale production. The machine combines Deere’s existing 8R tractor, a TruSet-enabled chisel plow, a GPS-based guidance system, and new advanced technologies.
The autonomous tractor has six pairs of stereo cameras, which enable 360-degree obstacle detection and the calculation of distance. Images captured by the cameras are passed through a deep neural network that classifies each pixel in 100 milliseconds and determines whether the machine continues to move or stops, depending on whether an obstacle is detected. The autonomous tractor continuously checks its position relative to a geofence, ensuring it operates where it is supposed to, and is within less than an inch of accuracy.
John Deere Operations Center Mobile provides access to live video, images, data and metrics on a mobile device. Using the app, farmers can swipe from left to start the machine. While the tractor is working, the farmer can leave the field to focus on other tasks, while monitoring the machine’s status.
The app allows a farmer to adjust speed, depth and more. In the event of any job quality anomalies or machine health issues, farmers will be notified remotely and can make adjustments to optimize the performance of the machine.
Unveiled at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 4, the autonomous tractor will be available to farmers later this year.
Hexagon’s Autonomy and Positioning division has launched its first autonomy positioning and sensing kits for the agriculture market and validated these solutions in its new autonomous research and development tractor.
Through collaboration between NovAtel and AutonomouStuff, both part of Hexagon, the autonomous positioning and sensing kits were developed as part of Hexagon’s Smart Autonomous Mobility solutions portfolio launched at CES in early 2020. NovAtel and AutonomouStuff created the solutions with agriculture machinery OEMs and robotic machinery manufacturers in mind.
As a demonstrator vehicle for Smart Autonomous Mobility, the autonomous tractor features object detection and classification, simultaneous relative localization and mapping, absolute positioning through GNSS technology, and localization sensor fusing. Built to illustrate the viability of new positioning and sensing kits, the tractor incorporates safety-critical learnings with situational and environmental awareness, and manual remote control when needed. This platform validates how these solutions and capabilities accelerate autonomous development.
Hexagon’s autonomous research and development tractor validated the new kit. (Photo: Hexagon)
The positioning and sensing kits are optimized for autonomous agriculture applications, including products like the Smart7 antenna and autonomous robotic capabilities through the NovAtel OEM7 driver powered by the Robot Operating System (ROS). The kits also feature TerraStar GNSS Correction Services, ALIGN heading and relative positioning firmware, and SPAN GNSS+INS technology. Though designed for agriculture, the kits integrate seamlessly into other off-road autonomy applications.
“These positioning and sensing kits provide developers with technology bringing assured positioning to autonomy in agriculture,” explained Michael Martinez, agriculture segment manager at Hexagon | NovAtel. “Robotic-machinery manufacturers or those experienced in autonomy may be unfamiliar with the unique challenges facing agriculture applications. Conversely, those experienced with agriculture may not have the expertise to integrate positioning and sensing products within autonomous solutions. We can help in both cases through these positioning and sensor kits, as demonstrated by our autonomous tractor.”
The new autonomous positioning and sensing kit. (Photo: Hexagon)
“We’re excited to use this tractor as a platform to validate the human identification, obstacle detection and enhanced environmental awareness that our sensing kits add to our assured positioning solutions in agriculture,” said John Buszek, VP of products and services at Hexagon | AutonomouStuff. “The sensing and positioning technologies we’ve integrated on this demonstration platform showcase the Smart Autonomous Mobility portfolio, which enables and accelerates the development of autonomy in agriculture applications from prototyping to production.”
For more than 30 years, NovAtel has delivered GNSS positioning solutions as a trusted provider for top precision agriculture companies. Combined with AutonomouStuff’s decade of expertise in autonomy and sensor fusion, they significantly reduce the barrier of entry into autonomy to accelerate the time to market for autonomous solutions in agriculture, construction, mining and other off-road applications.
Learn more about their agriculture autonomy capabilities by taking a virtual tractor tour via their 3D interactive app or online at novatel.com/ag-autonomy.
AgJunction Inc. is partnering with Swift Navigation to develop near-autonomous small tractor solutions for agricultural applications with high accuracy.
The Duro enclosure. (Photo: Swift Navigation)
The partnership will combine autosteering technology pioneered by AgJunction and the Duro RTK GNSS receiver from Swift Navigation. The research resulting from this partnership will ultimately lead to lower cost autosteering products with high accuracy, the company said.
“Duro, and the robust RTK GNSS positioning it delivers, is a source of pride for Swift,” shared Tim Harris, CEO of Swift Navigation. “With a mission to enable a future of autonomous vehicles, we strive to bring that autonomy to farm equipment — such as small tractors — at an affordable price for farmers and partnering with the renowned autosteering expert AgJunction helps make that a reality.”
“AgJunction and Swift have been groundbreaking in their respective fields,” said Dave Vaughn, president and CEO of AgJunction. “I’m eager for what the future holds and how we can further deliver low-cost autosteering and navigation while delivering high accuracy down to a centimeter.”
Google and the big automakers might get the lion’s share of attention when it comes to autonomous road vehicles, but John Deere has been making self-driving tractors for more than 15 years.
Among them is the 9RX tractor, which can steer itself, freeing the farmer to focus on business. The 9RX, introduced in August, features an articulated steering system and an optional Active Command Steering (ACS), which improves maneuverability in the field and line-holding ability at transport speeds.
Hands-free driving: Ag companies take the wheel. (Photo: John Deere).
Farmers don’t need to navigate other traffic, just make optimal use of fields. Before farmers began using GPS to plan routes, a few feet would get reworked in every row. With GPS-based auto-driving accurate down to the inch, missed spots and repetition are avoided, saving farmers time, fuel and money.
With a tractor the only moving object in a vast acreage, collisions are highly unlikely. Still, a driver still needs to be at the tractor’s wheel. Unlike consumer vehicles being developed for autonomous operation on public roads, the tractors don’t have external sensors on all sides to prevent collisions. A fully autonomous tractor, which doesn’t require a driver, probably won’t hit the market before 2025, according to John Deere.
Inside the cab, farmers can equip their tractors with a variety of modular systems that allow computers control over operations, starting with a basic satellite guidance system and a touchscreen interface. From there, an add-on lets the tractor make precise turns autonomously, and another uses radio base stations set up around fields to supplement navigational accuracy. Besides the high-tech features, cabs of the 9RX have luxury touches such as an integrated refrigerator and high-quality sound.
Laser Navigation
Other companies that offer auto-steering include Case IH and Autonomous Tractor Corporation.
Case IH offers guidance and steering for use on tractors, such as its Magnum 340 Tractor. (Photo: Case IH)
Case IH provides steering and guidance tools for tractors, combines and sprayers. Its AFS AccuGuide auto guidance enables repeatable accuracy down to sub-inch levels. AFS RowGuide works with AFS AccuGuide to provide accurate, hands-off steering for corn harvests. Two mechanical touch sensors mounted on the corn-head dividers sense row position and provide guidance input in concert with GPS.
Autonomous Tractor bills itself as a non-GPS system without dead spots or signal interference. Instead, it uses a proprietary laser-radio navigation system (LRNS) for sub-inch positioning data, along with its own FieldSmart software that allows farmers to “train” the tractor without programming.
Sonar systems provide full perimeter safety, and pan-tilt cameras communicate via cellular to allow the farmer to monitor progress and remotely resolve issues.
