Self-driving tractors and machine learning. Agriculture is no longer the same
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November 22, 2022 is the date on which the world’s population exceeded 8 billion people. If we consider that in 1974 there were half of us, it is easy to understand how creating enough food for everyone is becoming a challenge. After all, arable land is not an infinite resource and it is necessary to prevent its depletion by resorting to sustainable agriculture techniques. Furthermore, experienced personnel are becoming increasingly rare due to the lack of attractiveness of careers in the sector, while low-wage careers are being reduced for social and legal reasons. Finally, there is the issue of costs. Cultivating the land and raising livestock must absolutely be a low-cost activity in order to guarantee farmers a fair income, but also because the costs of these activities are directly reflected in food prices and, consequently, in inflation. Optimization, circularity and sustainability therefore become the three watchwords for the future of global food production. But how can a traditional world like agriculture be innovated?
On the other hand, agriculture is no longer what it used to be. With the generational turnover, a group of professionals emerges who look at new technologies with great interest. And tools are arriving on the market that allow wonders. CNH Industrial’s offer has evolved to bring real autonomous robots to the fields. During Tech Day in Phoenix, Arizona, he presented his vision of how the agricultural world is changing. The first trend concerns tools for precision agriculture, to optimize consumption and resources. Tractors, ploughs, threshers and balers today are stuffed with sensors and actuators that allow complete control of the activities to the centimetre. The tractors are self-driving and follow the instructions that come from a software that prepares the route to follow in the field. The autonomy of the machine saves man-hours that would otherwise be involved in work with very low added value, but also allows optimizing the passages on the field thanks to a positioning system that uses GPS and RTK for precision action, with a margin of less than two centimeters.
CNH Industrial has set up its machines to work connected to a platform that continuously detects their position and operations. The machines in action can thus be coordinated to achieve maximum efficiency. A fertilizer spreading machine can release the liquid exclusively near the plant thanks to a system of computer vision which recognizes what passes under the tractor, while the central coordination system keeps track of where the field has already been sprayed, where the robotic sprayer can close the nozzles. Similarly, the latest generation of plows use algorithms machine learning to adjust the trim and get the best result. Extreme automation allows great savings from an energy point of view, but also higher revenues because it increases the quality and quantity of crops. Furthermore, it allows you to devote more specialized personnel to more strategic activities.
An important part of the innovation in the sector is related to fuels. At the tech day, CNH presented the world’s first prototype of an electric-driven self-driving tractor, as well as a series of systems for driverless ploughing, a partially autonomous harvest in which two huge vehicles (the harvester and the cargo) combine automatically tile and work in unison with incredible precision, and an autonomous baler that uses Lidar systems like self-driving cars.
All this is happening thanks to a series of operations that bring various know-hows to ferry agriculture into the third millennium. In addition to the acquisition of Raven Industries, CNH has focused on a partnership with Bennamann to develop an energy circularity strategy, entered into the capital of Stout Industrial Technology to guarantee itself a privileged place in the development of new technologies for the automation of machines and has partnered with Monarch Tractor for traction electrification
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