Driverless Tractors Driving Force for Farming Industry

CLEWISTON, Fla: An operator in an air‑conditioned trailer monitored four driverless tractors via laptop and averaged 238 acres a day. 

Those figures come from Florida Trend's July report on the deployment, covering the test period. The magazine reported they cut roughly the same acreage per hour as a person does. What they do is keep going. The disc stays in the soil about 90% of the time the tractor is running, compared to closer to 65% with a driver aboard. 

The fleet is five tractors, four John Deere 8R Series and one 9R Series, retrofitted with Autonomous Solutions Inc.'s Vehicle Automation Kit and watched from a central station through the Mobius fleet platform. U.S. Sugar, ASI and John Deere dealer Everglades Equipment Group announced on May 11 that the deployment was the largest commercial use of autonomous tractors in American sugar." 

Hiring drove the decision as much as productivity did. Seasonal tractor work has been hard to fill, U.S. Sugar financial analyst Lyndsay Sergent told Florida Trend: "It's not the most glamorous job." 

The fields around Clewiston are not easy ground for a robot. Floods conceal rocks, and ditches and canals hem in fields, so those hazards must be mapped and programmed around. The team deliberately chose a challenging farm. McWhorter said maintenance costs fell because the software lifts discs on turns and avoids rocks better than a tired driver.  

On Sept. 13, ASI CEO Mel Torrie wrote that tractors prepare land more accurately than humans. Five machines operate autonomously on a 255,000‑acre farm. AGDAILY reported in June that the farm has more than 300 tractors. U.S. Sugar says it will spread the system across the full acreage over the next decade, with cultivation the next job in line.