It appears the time of the field robot may finally be dawning.
Autonomous Tractor Corp. is ready to sell a driverless system that will allow tractors to perform all normal field sans an operator sitting in the seat.
That this has finally happened cannot be a surprise to anyone.
Industry people were crystal-balling automaton tractors years ago, and we have seen steps in that direction for more than a decade. The increased accuracy of global positioning systems, and of course the added capacity and speed of computer processing systems have finally made the complete move to driverless a possible reality.
In this respect tractors are not unique.
Guangzhou-based Ehang Inc., a Chinese company, recently unveiled a drone capable of carrying a human passenger; the Ehang 184 at the Las Vegas convention center during the CES gadget show.
It looks like a small helicopter but with four propellers spinning parallel to the ground in a similar configuration to other drones, detailed a story at www.theguardian.com
鈥淭he electric-powered drone can be fully charged in two hours, carry up to 100kg (220lb) and fly for 23 minutes at sea level, according to Ehang. The cabin fits one person and a small backpack and is fitted with air conditioning and a reading light. It is designed to fit, with propellers folded, in a single parking spot.
鈥淎fter setting a flight plan, passengers need only to give two commands 鈥� 鈥渢ake off鈥� and 鈥渓and鈥� 鈥� done with a single click on a tablet, the company said.鈥�
And a self-driving car is an existing technology which is likely to see dramatic growth in terms of on-raid use in the years ahead.
鈥淪elf-driving cars are no longer a futuristic idea. Companies like Mercedes, BMW, and Tesla have already released, or are soon to release, self-driving features that give the car some ability to drive itself,鈥� related a July 2015 article at www.businessinsider.com 鈥溾�� Self-driving cars are not some futuristic auto technology; in fact there are already cars with self-driving features on the road. We define the self-driving car as any car with features that allow it to accelerate, brake, and steer a car鈥檚 course with limited or no driver interaction.鈥�
The article further suggests cause of regulatory and insurance questions, user-operated fully autonomous cars will come to market within the next five years, while driverless cars will remain a long ways off.
However they do estimate 10 million self-driving cars on the road by 2020. Think about that. It is but four years in the future.
So tractors going the driverless route are actually mundane news outside the farm community.
There are certainly less risks with a driverless tractor than having a passenger motoring through the sky, or a family heading down a busy highway.
Tractors at work usually follow a very well defined pattern when seeding, spraying, or doing other normal field work. That defined pattern has to aid in programming an autonomous tractor.
And the benefits are rather obvious, as the ATC website suggests.
鈥淎TC鈥檚 technology addresses one of the most pressing problems in agriculture today - a lack of qualified labor during peak season needs. The system installs on your existing tractor to make it truly autonomous without relying on GPS. It can be trained to do countless repetitive field tasks on its own so you have time to manage your farm and maximize profits. And you can still drive it manually whenever you need to.鈥�
The tractor will be able to roll across a field 24/7 and that is an efficiency farmers will have to look at as a step forward.
In the case of the ATC system it can be added to an existing tractor.
But in time it is likely we will see power units and cabs and all the human-interface monitors, with the tractor being fully autonomous. That will take longer as there is the 鈥榗omfort鈥� level of producers that will be a barrier, but long term the robot will be more and more common across a broad spectrum of or lives, farm operations included.
This is a future we are already too committed to in terms of research and development in terms of robotics, artificial intelligence, and the hope to remove the human factor from the equation of business not to see the outcome ahead.
The new ATC development is but another step on the road.
Calvin Daniels is Assistant Editor with Yorkton This Week.
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