John Deere – yes, the tractor company – has unveiled its Fully Autonomous Self-Driving Tractor(opens in a new tab), This year is no different: On Thursday, the company announced its new electric excavator and robotics-based fertilizer system, the PreciseShot. In two releases John Deere won the CES 2023 award for Best Innovation in Robotics and Approved as an honor for vehicle technology and advanced mobility.
“Why should you care about farmers when they represent less than two percent of America’s population?” John Deere CEO John May said in a keynote CES(opens in a new tab), “You won’t find two industries that have had a bigger impact on our world and all of us than agriculture and construction.”
CES 2023: Everything you need to know
ExactShot uses sensors and robotics to apply fertilizers exactly where the seeds need them, rather than releasing a continuous flow of fertilizer into the seed row. John Deere says this will reduce the required amount of starter fertilizer by more than 60 percent—that’s more than 93 million gallons of starter fertilizer annually.
“The PreciseShot uses a sensor to register when each individual seed is in the process of going into the soil,” the company wrote in a press release. “As this happens, a robot will spray just the amount of fertilizer needed, about 0.2 milliliters, directly onto the seed, right at the moment it goes into the ground.”
Another innovation from the tractor company is its see-and-spray technology, which uses 36 cameras on a massive 120-foot-long machine to pinpoint the difference between weeds and plants—and kills the former without harming the latter. Is. This reduces the amount of herbicide farmers need by up to 66 percent, and it tastes great.
Credit: Mashable / Christiana Silva
There’s also electric excavators, which have zero emissions – with less noise pollution and lower costs – without sacrificing power. It’s operated by Kreisel Electric, which Deere acquired a majority stake in last February. Kreisel’s charging technology puts less strain on the electrical grid.
“Everything we do at John Deere is focused on real purpose and real impact,” Jahmi Hindman, CTO of John Deere, said in a press release(opens in a new tab), “This means we are developing technology that enables our customers to provide the food, fuel, fiber and infrastructure our growing global population needs.”
Julian Sanchez, John Deere’s Director of Emerging Technologies, told Mashable at CES 2023 that John Deere has been able to continue to innovate at such a rapid pace because the company has a checklist of things that farmers really want and need — And it has done the groundwork to find solutions.
“I don’t know that we sit around and say, ‘Oh man, how can we beat him?'” Sanchez said. “We get a long list of requests from farmers. We just keep pulling from that list. They said, ‘Hey, herbicide is great for weeds. Now we need cameras that can detect plant health.’ Okay, we’ll start working on that.”
“If this sounds like a lot of technology, it is,” May said at CES.
