23 ms·

Google didn’t lead the self-driving vehicle revolution, John Deere did

181 points by Libertatea 11y ago

gnu8 11y ago
John Deere does not receive any credit for any innovations they may have made in the area of self driving vehicles until they acknowledge the right of vehicle owners to service their own machines and release all required documentation, source code, and diagnostic tools to facilitate this.
- davelnewton 11y ago
  Couldn't agree more; it's pretty insidious. To be fair, the other systems we've installed are similarly encumbered (at least so far).
- viggity 11y ago
  I understand where you're coming from and I think there is a middle ground, but there is certainly a decent rationale for locking it down: these machines cost $750K to $1M and enormously complex. Allowing an owner to inject some jury rigged code could cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the machine, or worse yet hurt or kill someone. Honestly, what would happen if the implements you have hitched to the back of the tractor can't receive the proper instructions because the owner bought some counterfeit FTDI chip. You can set up your spray zones to make sure you don't spray pesticides near waterways, who is liable if that gets screwed up? The counterfeiter? The Farmer? Either way you know John Deere is going to get dragged through the mud for it.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    This is an argument against allowing self-service, but it isn't an argument against opening things up and allowing certified third party service. Preventing counterfeiting by not releasing source/documentation is a pretty textbook case at an attempt at security through obscurity.
  - teddyh 11y ago
    The exact same argument could be made about cars. Or a house. Or any large, complicated and expensive modern thing, really. I’m assuming that you don’t believe that similar restrictions are reasonable on cars or houses, etc. So what makes a tractor so utterly different? Is it more dangerous? Cars can certainly be more dangerous. And a house? Where people sleep? Wouldn’t that be even more important to restrict people’s ham-fisted “repairs” or the like? But we don’t. So why are tractors different?
    - jcranmer 11y ago
      But we do have similar restrictions on a house--you need licensed electricians, etc., as well as approved building permits to do many tasks.
    - Phlarp 11y ago
      Cars are similarly locked down, as are many (most?) consumer electronics devices. Buildings have an even more complex system of restrictions placed on them, called fire/building/electrical codes, albeit the enforcement is more nuanced. If you want to advocate for a more open system of published regulations and a licensing/insurance system for professionals that's fine, but don't try to pretend that other facets of life aren't equally regulated.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- codezero 11y ago
  I have a hunch future retail self driving cars will have the same restrictions, unfortunately.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    Who wants to actually own their own bare metal anymore? Why do you want to be tied to this specific server or car, this specific package of molecules? The SPSD Car[1] will not be something that can be owned by individuals. You can use your smartphone to request a pickup, which will be fulfilled by any of a number of nearby cars. You'll lease a license to be transported in one car, and the app will automatically transfer that license to the car that's fulfilling your trip. Your Leased License to be Transported in a Car will only apply for the duration of the trip, and gives you no rights or responsibilities to the underlying vehicle. [1] (Solar Powered Self Driving)
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      We are a long way from that. In a cab, its somebody's job to keep it clean and safe. An auto-car may arrive with dog droppings, vomit, trash in the back seat with slashed upholstery and condom wrappers. How is that going to be managed?
      - stephengillie 11y ago
        It will be managed by whatever company owns the cabs and rents them out. They may subcontract that to car detailing businesses.
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Sure, once a day or once a week. A cabbie is right on any problem. Or they don't get any custom. An auto-car could be disgusting for hours or days.
        stephengillie 11y ago
- rayiner 11y ago
  That makes no sense at all.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- tgb 11y ago
  How do we make this ideal compatible with the often-stated claim that, for insurance and legal purposes, the manufacturer should be liable for the vehicle? A car you can service only at the cost of losing your insurance and legal protection is practically a non-serviceable car.
- fluidcruft 11y ago
  You mean how Apple similarly doesn't deserve credit for the iPhone and iPad until they open up the platform?
melling 11y ago
This is an apples to oranges comparison of technologies.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
seren 11y ago
From a layman perspective, it sounds much easier to automate a vehicle moving in a field, where you have a low chance of hitting a pedestrian or a cyclist.
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  To be fair, they also started working on the problem before Google even existed, with technology more primitive than Google's first servers.
  - bryanlarsen 11y ago
    Yes, I know of professors who were doing field trials of self-driving tractors 30 years ago, and I'm sure they weren't the first.
    - acadien 11y ago
      The mining industry has dreamed of self driving vehicles to replace humans in dangerous work conditions for ages.
      - cake 11y ago
        Nothing new here : http://mining.sandvik.com/en/products/equipment/mine-automation-systems/equipment-automation http://mining.sandvik.com/en/products/equipment/mine-automat...
- davelnewton 11y ago
  It is, although there are issues that self-driving cars don't have to deal with, like muddy conditions on hills, lining up rows (tricky on head rows), speed-matching during picker unloading (e.g., tractor and truck working together to evenly-distribute the unload), etc.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    Self driving cars absolutely do have to deal with varying friction of different road surfaces and conditions, lane alignment, speed matching (or rather, not bunching), overtaking. There is a lot of overlap in the tasks. The only one you mention that is unique is unloading while picking.
da_chicken 11y ago
While I certainly agree that self-driving farm equipment is revolutionary, I'd argue that Google's technological advances are in the field of being able to understand how to drive on a road which marked for humans to drive on, and which is simultaneously in use by human drivers as well. I'm sure that there are problems and issues which arise from navigating a field and manipulating whatever equipment you've got for whatever task you're working on that I'm just not fully appreciating. However, I really question if that task is anywhere near as complex as safely navigating traffic while obeying all the laws of the road when you can't even be sure of the state of the road you'll be travelling on. It's just a totally different problem being solved. This is apples and oranges.
- jonlucc 11y ago
  I think you're correct. I can vividly remember a local news story from at least 15 years ago that talked about self-driving cars being just around the corner. All it would take is putting sensors in every roadway and having dedicated lanes for them. I was pretty young and excitable, and I could not figure out why we weren't putting those sensors in as roads were replaced around the city. Google requires none of that insane retrofitting, and is therefore much more likely to be useful.
  - walshemj 11y ago
    I can rember a local agricultural college in the UK (silsoe now part of cranfield) experimenting with self driving tractors back in the late 70's
  - netcan 11y ago
    I think this is a valid approach, in theory. IE, find some limited use case for a self driving cab service in a city and try to make the problem more like an agricultural field. OTOH, it would require a city or state to actively pursue this kind of a bleeding edge technology, make decisions and possibly even develop the technology. Maybe there are some municipalities out there with the competence for this, but not many. I'm not as down on government abilities as some on here, but I think you have to admit that making such a technologically innovative, blue sky project a public one seems like a recipe for disaster. The self driving cars can just develop on the free market. If the cars are good enough to go on normal roads people will buy them. I imagine that if they are prevalent enough, cities will then gradually tailor the infrastructure for them. Still, there must be someplace where the smarter infrastructure could take some of the hard problems away for self driving cars and get a nice demo going. Some small town, large army base, some specific city hoping routes?
bsbechtel 11y ago
This article is giving credit to a market leader, but I'm pretty sure there were a number of GPS technology companies and precision ag startups that were working on automating farm equipment first. John Deere has many times been a late adopter in terms of technology, waiting to see what pans out in the market, then relying on the penetration of their dealer network to distribute proven technologies to a much wider audience.
- JamisonM 11y ago
  Yes, this a ridiculous PR puff-piece. JD saw something coming and got into the business along with a bunch of other companies. There are a lot of competing GPS technology companies that make products just as good if not better and sell well in the absence of the advantages that JD had from the start. Hemisphere GNSS, whose (Outback) products I use, has a superior product in my opinion and started a few years before Deere got interested in the business at all.
  - bsbechtel 11y ago
    Or just journalistic naivete and laziness of not thoroughly researching a sector. It looks like the author normally covers consumer technology, so she probably doesn't know much about the agriculture or GPS industries. I would give her the benefit of the doubt of not knowing (which in journalism isn't really an excuse), but either way it's bad journalism.
    - mavhc 11y ago
      True of 99% of journalism, you know if you read articles about your field of expertise how wrong they are, they're just as wrong about everything else.
jfoster 11y ago
I think a lot of the commenters here are correct in pointing out that the problem John Deere have solved is very different from the problem that Google, Tesla, Uber are trying to solve. That said, I think there is a "human acceptance" piece necessary for autonomous vehicles to be allowed on roads. A lot of people are going to fear, dislike, or be otherwise opposed to sharing the road with autonomous vehicles. A lot of people simply don't believe that it is possible for an autonomous vehicle to handle certain driving situations. To be able to point to tractors driving themselves around fields for the past X years is valuable in getting humans to accept robotic cars.
- aidos 11y ago
  It's useful but I guess people will just raise that same reservation - just because they work in the field...blah blah blah. My guess is that insurance will force people's hands in the switch. Most accidents on the road are due to human error (I assume, or rather had there not been human involvement the situation could have been avoided). Let's assume that self driving technology reaches the safety level that most of us here believe it will. Insurers, hedging against risk will have to financially penalise manual driving, since it will carry a much higher risk. Hopefully that takes the irrational opposition out of the equation and let's the raw statistics take charge :)
aylons 11y ago
Not actually. John Deer doest not build vehicles, he builds machinery. John Deer machines work in a strict set of environments, and although they may be very sophisticated and react to a range of adverse situations, these situations are still much more predictable and the route much better known in advance than roads and streets. If the autonomous vehicle problem were dealing with different roads, pavements and other pre-programmed vehicles, the self driving car would be a thing from the 80s, together with the robot car welder.
joshstrange 11y ago
How about no.... Driving a tractor through a predetermined path in a predictable pattern is no where near the same as driving on our roads with human error and the like. Also I'm not about to get behind a company that won't let you service your own machinery.
raverbashing 11y ago
To be more clear, here's what JD equipment doesn't have to worry about that Google's does - Pedestrians - Other vehicles and obstacles (and automatically detecting them) - Roads - Traffic laws JDs tractors are choreographed, it's not really 'self-driving'
- txdv 11y ago
  also cats have seen a cat picked up by a corn harvester
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    Yeah, but I guess even a human has difficulty picking those in a place with tall vegetation Lots of small mammals die this way :(
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Or even speed. What's the average speed of a tractor in exercise ? 15 mph ?[1] anticipation need, which was already pretty low in a field, gets even closer to zero. [1] quick googling says some countries impose speed limit of 20mph but I don't know if it's on public roads and not private land. http://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/road-rules-for-tractors-in-the-uk-and-europe.htm http://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/road-rules-for-tractors-in-th...
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    Probably on public roads, speed is lower when harvesting
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      So I fail to see what Deere did. A 10mph, pretty stable, on mostly flat (curved, but locally flat) land, with almost nothing of its size to interfere (won't a beef move away if a tractor aims at him ?), except avoiding the occasional tree .. I fail to see what problem they had.
- 11y ago
peter303 11y ago
DARPA jump-started the industry with their three autonomous vehicle competitions a decade ago. Most of the entrants were university mechanical engineering departments. No one came close to completing the first challenge. But they got pretty good by the third one. Google and the auto indutry continued funding thereafter.
- martincmartin 11y ago
  The DARPA grand challenge was certainly a pivotal event, but I wouldn't say it jump-started the industry. The two biggest teams in the second race, from CMU and Stanford, were both spinoffs of the Field Robotics Center at CMU, which had been doing this for a long time: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript705.htm http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript705.htm Disclosure: I was a grad student at CMU at the time, in the building, and saw a lot of this up close.
david_b 11y ago
I'd say Daimler and co. got there first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project Google has obviously taken taken that a lot further (no driver reacting every 9km) > "We kind of laugh when we see news stories about self-driving cars, because we've had that for years," Poole said. Yup, no wonder he is a farmer (to be fair: if you're running a tractor at 2 am you may well imagine there to be heavy traffic on the field...).
- kriro 11y ago
  Daimler is also doing quite a bit with self driving trucks. I'd guess they have to be a leader in that domain. Admittedly they weren't really on my radar until the recent news about their tests in Nevada.
roel_v 11y ago
What's especially laughable is the article's mention of robotic lawn mowers. I happen to have bought one today, and those things (although admittedly there are models that are more intelligent) just ride around randomly until they hit a hard object or the perimeter, which is signaled by a wire that is dug into the ground. An 'autonomous vehicle' this is not (or only for the most basic definition of the concept).
- choward 11y ago
  Yeah, might as well compare it to a Roomba too.
- thomasfoster96 11y ago
  The way robotic lawn mowers work sounds awfully like the beginner LEGO Mondstorms projects.
raldi 11y ago
Comparing this tractor to a self-driving car is like calling someone an ace pilot even though they don't know how to take off or land.
Coincoin 11y ago
Driving a car is a social exercise. The challenge is making something navigate through human chaos, not make it move. Even the article itself hints that comparing the two is kind of stupid: "[...]where there are few pesky pedestrians or federal rules to get in the way." and then immediately proceeds laughing at the general population ignorance because farmers did it first. I remember when I was a child, my father explained to me that depressing the right pedal makes the car go forward, the left one makes it stop and this round thing makes it turn. "WOW! Easy!" I exclaimed, "I know to drive now!" Yeah right. Elevators are automated. Subways are automated. Even mother fucking planes can fly and land themselves (with the right equipment). Yup those giant flying monsters containing hundreds of human souls got automated before our cars. But wait, Google is stupid because it didn't do it first. EDIT: missing sentence
dm2 11y ago
John Deere didn't invent the technology though, Autonomous Solutions Inc. (ASI) did. They partnered in ~2000. http://www.asirobots.com/news/ http://www.asirobots.com/news/ http://www.asirobots.com/farming/ http://www.asirobots.com/farming/ http://www.asirobots.com/products/mobius/ http://www.asirobots.com/products/mobius/
- nas 11y ago
  You sure? Satloc was doing GPS guidance for aerial guidance for decades (crop dusting planes). They adapted it for ag guidance in the 1990s I believe. This technology has been evolving for years and saying that John Deere or some single company invented it sounds like a gross oversimplification.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- mojoB 11y ago
  ASI were hardly the first, and Deere had their AutoTrac system before they started working with ASI. > The Beeline Navigator was developed in 1993 by Australian engineer, Rob Mailer. [1] [1] http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/news/agriculture/machinery/general-news/agsystems-beeline-to-world-sales/33130.aspx http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/news/agriculture/mac...
  - deleted 11y ago
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    - mojoB 11y ago
      I don't have any inside knowledge of the Deere system, but I'd be very surprised if it was. My guess is that most of the Deere stuff comes NavCom. That is certainly the case for their GPS system. > "NavCom's involvement with Deere & Company began with Deere's GreenStar precision farming system in 1994 and has expanded into many areas of Deere's product activities. The commitment by the most senior Deere management to information systems leadership motivated the NavCom shareholder-employees to join with Deere & Company," http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/deere--company-acquires-navcom-technology-inc-a-provider-of-precise-positioning-and-data-communications-77289562.html http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/deere--company-acqui...
funkyy 11y ago
So did any of Google Moon-shoots actually had ANY impact on society so far besides being a cool news story? It looks like most of their cool projects got to the point, where they stale and cannot move ahead.
ksk 11y ago
Instead of self-driving cars, I'd say focus on eliminating the need for "going somewhere"/vehicles in general. Would be so cool if we could just 'beam' in to work. 3D virtual presence. But hey, its not my money they're investing.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  How about 3D bio-printing you at work? Oh but at the end of the day, do you get rid of the copy, or get rid of you? Could be some trouble either way.
hellbanner 11y ago
Many years ago, I dreamed of huge roadways with wi-fi embedded in the road. Cars would broadcast their destination and the network would adjust the speed of all cars to facilitate a smooth entry to the freeway and subsequent navigation. Self-driving cars are really cool. However, if every car is trying to optimize for itself then traffic will still be an issue.
fixermark 11y ago
Spot-on but unimportant. "Apple didn't lead the mobile device revolution. Blackberry did." Technologies succeeding in the gauntlet of consumer electronics makes a bigger splash in public media---for obvious reasons---than those same technologies applied to the problems of specific trades.
edward 11y ago
Self-driving tractor in 1978: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3xS3eIHzLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3xS3eIHzLk
adaml_623 11y ago
How about we all just agree this is a click-bait article and we've all gone chomp on the hook. I don't want to write 'who cares' but realistically neither John Deer or Google did. There were gifted individuals at both companies who wrote the code and developed the hardware and one day someone will write a book and it might be an interesting read. To argue for JD or Google is just playing into the marketers hands. /rant
gech 11y ago
>But another is pure necessity: There's a labor crunch in rural America - young people move to the cities, leaving the average age of U.S. farmers at 58, according to the Department of Agriculture. Similar forces are pushing self-driving tech into other industrial sectors at a pace that outstrips the consumer market. > Oh sure, that's the reason. All the job seekers dried up.
callesgg 11y ago
It is more comparable to automated lawnmowers, than it is to selfdriving cars.
anon4 11y ago
Sure, but none of the engineers who work for John Deere would ever be allowed to publish their developments, nor would they get any public recognition for them.
dj_doh 11y ago
Last time I checked I didn't see any farming in my local main street. Not sure to what extent technology from John Deere can be used for public vehicle. May be not much.
vmorgulis 11y ago
In the most recent user guide (2013), they talk about "mapping". https://stellarsupport.deere.com/en_US/support/pdf/om/en/PFP13445_2630_userguide.pdf https://stellarsupport.deere.com/en_US/support/pdf/om/en/PFP... You can record a map with the GPS and replay it. It's a little bit like waypoints for drones. There are other companies that make driverless tractors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor It also reminds me the machines in Interstellar (the indian drone that can fly 10 years and the tractor).
cheetos 11y ago
Forgive my laziness, but the last time I did any long research about self-driving cars, I understood that the problem of night-time driving and driving in precipitation still hadn't been solved. Anyone know if this is still the case?
Animats 11y ago
Self-driving tractors are incredibly dumb. They just follow a predefined path using GPS. Most don't even have any obstacle sensing. They probably should at least have a basic obstacle detection radar, but at present, they don't. I saw the original John Deere differential GPS prototype tractor in use at Stanford many years ago. There used to be an empty field next to the Stanford horse barn where they tested. It's now a parking lot.
anigbrowl 11y ago
Will someone who works at Amazon and reads HN please ask Jeff Bezos to tell the Washington Post to grow out of this smartass fake journalism? Most people are well aware that agribusiness depends heavily on automation. Most people are equally well aware that it's a lot easier to drive around a field when you are the only thing in it than to drive on a public road. That's why you only need a driving license for the latter case. The entire article is one giant straw man fallacy.
- fredkbloggs 11y ago
  > Most people are well aware that agribusiness depends heavily on automation. While it doesn't necessarily invalidate your criticism, this couldn't be less true. Most people in the Washington Post's reader base have exactly zero awareness of agriculture, full stop. Food comes in a box they buy at the supermarket, and that's the extent of their knowledge. If they have any thoughts beyond that, it's probably either an understanding of farming they got from a quaint children's book, or some kind of poorly-reasoned Monsanto/GMO FUD they heard at a fashionable dinner party. The idea that they know what kind of ag equipment is on the market, what it does, how it works, or what it costs is ludicrous.
gukov 11y ago
Time to buy $DE

181 points by Libertatea 11y ago

gnu8 11y ago

John Deere does not receive any credit for any innovations they may have made in the area of self driving vehicles until they acknowledge the right of vehicle owners to service their own machines and release all required documentation, source code, and diagnostic tools to facilitate this.

davelnewton 11y ago
Couldn't agree more; it's pretty insidious. To be fair, the other systems we've installed are similarly encumbered (at least so far).
viggity 11y ago
I understand where you're coming from and I think there is a middle ground, but there is certainly a decent rationale for locking it down: these machines cost $750K to $1M and enormously complex. Allowing an owner to inject some jury rigged code could cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the machine, or worse yet hurt or kill someone. Honestly, what would happen if the implements you have hitched to the back of the tractor can't receive the proper instructions because the owner bought some counterfeit FTDI chip. You can set up your spray zones to make sure you don't spray pesticides near waterways, who is liable if that gets screwed up? The counterfeiter? The Farmer? Either way you know John Deere is going to get dragged through the mud for it.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  This is an argument against allowing self-service, but it isn't an argument against opening things up and allowing certified third party service. Preventing counterfeiting by not releasing source/documentation is a pretty textbook case at an attempt at security through obscurity.
- teddyh 11y ago
  The exact same argument could be made about cars. Or a house. Or any large, complicated and expensive modern thing, really. I’m assuming that you don’t believe that similar restrictions are reasonable on cars or houses, etc. So what makes a tractor so utterly different? Is it more dangerous? Cars can certainly be more dangerous. And a house? Where people sleep? Wouldn’t that be even more important to restrict people’s ham-fisted “repairs” or the like? But we don’t. So why are tractors different?
  - jcranmer 11y ago
    But we do have similar restrictions on a house--you need licensed electricians, etc., as well as approved building permits to do many tasks.
  - Phlarp 11y ago
    Cars are similarly locked down, as are many (most?) consumer electronics devices. Buildings have an even more complex system of restrictions placed on them, called fire/building/electrical codes, albeit the enforcement is more nuanced. If you want to advocate for a more open system of published regulations and a licensing/insurance system for professionals that's fine, but don't try to pretend that other facets of life aren't equally regulated.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
codezero 11y ago
I have a hunch future retail self driving cars will have the same restrictions, unfortunately.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Who wants to actually own their own bare metal anymore? Why do you want to be tied to this specific server or car, this specific package of molecules? The SPSD Car[1] will not be something that can be owned by individuals. You can use your smartphone to request a pickup, which will be fulfilled by any of a number of nearby cars. You'll lease a license to be transported in one car, and the app will automatically transfer that license to the car that's fulfilling your trip. Your Leased License to be Transported in a Car will only apply for the duration of the trip, and gives you no rights or responsibilities to the underlying vehicle. [1] (Solar Powered Self Driving)
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    We are a long way from that. In a cab, its somebody's job to keep it clean and safe. An auto-car may arrive with dog droppings, vomit, trash in the back seat with slashed upholstery and condom wrappers. How is that going to be managed?
    - stephengillie 11y ago
      It will be managed by whatever company owns the cabs and rents them out. They may subcontract that to car detailing businesses.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Sure, once a day or once a week. A cabbie is right on any problem. Or they don't get any custom. An auto-car could be disgusting for hours or days.
        stephengillie 11y ago
rayiner 11y ago
That makes no sense at all.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tgb 11y ago
How do we make this ideal compatible with the often-stated claim that, for insurance and legal purposes, the manufacturer should be liable for the vehicle? A car you can service only at the cost of losing your insurance and legal protection is practically a non-serviceable car.
fluidcruft 11y ago
You mean how Apple similarly doesn't deserve credit for the iPhone and iPad until they open up the platform?

melling 11y ago

This is an apples to oranges comparison of technologies.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

seren 11y ago

From a layman perspective, it sounds much easier to automate a vehicle moving in a field, where you have a low chance of hitting a pedestrian or a cyclist.

bsbechtel 11y ago
To be fair, they also started working on the problem before Google even existed, with technology more primitive than Google's first servers.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  Yes, I know of professors who were doing field trials of self-driving tractors 30 years ago, and I'm sure they weren't the first.
  - acadien 11y ago
    The mining industry has dreamed of self driving vehicles to replace humans in dangerous work conditions for ages.
    - cake 11y ago
      Nothing new here : http://mining.sandvik.com/en/products/equipment/mine-automation-systems/equipment-automation http://mining.sandvik.com/en/products/equipment/mine-automat...
davelnewton 11y ago
It is, although there are issues that self-driving cars don't have to deal with, like muddy conditions on hills, lining up rows (tricky on head rows), speed-matching during picker unloading (e.g., tractor and truck working together to evenly-distribute the unload), etc.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  Self driving cars absolutely do have to deal with varying friction of different road surfaces and conditions, lane alignment, speed matching (or rather, not bunching), overtaking. There is a lot of overlap in the tasks. The only one you mention that is unique is unloading while picking.

da_chicken 11y ago

While I certainly agree that self-driving farm equipment is revolutionary, I'd argue that Google's technological advances are in the field of being able to understand how to drive on a road which marked for humans to drive on, and which is simultaneously in use by human drivers as well. I'm sure that there are problems and issues which arise from navigating a field and manipulating whatever equipment you've got for whatever task you're working on that I'm just not fully appreciating. However, I really question if that task is anywhere near as complex as safely navigating traffic while obeying all the laws of the road when you can't even be sure of the state of the road you'll be travelling on. It's just a totally different problem being solved. This is apples and oranges.

jonlucc 11y ago
I think you're correct. I can vividly remember a local news story from at least 15 years ago that talked about self-driving cars being just around the corner. All it would take is putting sensors in every roadway and having dedicated lanes for them. I was pretty young and excitable, and I could not figure out why we weren't putting those sensors in as roads were replaced around the city. Google requires none of that insane retrofitting, and is therefore much more likely to be useful.
- walshemj 11y ago
  I can rember a local agricultural college in the UK (silsoe now part of cranfield) experimenting with self driving tractors back in the late 70's
- netcan 11y ago
  I think this is a valid approach, in theory. IE, find some limited use case for a self driving cab service in a city and try to make the problem more like an agricultural field. OTOH, it would require a city or state to actively pursue this kind of a bleeding edge technology, make decisions and possibly even develop the technology. Maybe there are some municipalities out there with the competence for this, but not many. I'm not as down on government abilities as some on here, but I think you have to admit that making such a technologically innovative, blue sky project a public one seems like a recipe for disaster. The self driving cars can just develop on the free market. If the cars are good enough to go on normal roads people will buy them. I imagine that if they are prevalent enough, cities will then gradually tailor the infrastructure for them. Still, there must be someplace where the smarter infrastructure could take some of the hard problems away for self driving cars and get a nice demo going. Some small town, large army base, some specific city hoping routes?

bsbechtel 11y ago

This article is giving credit to a market leader, but I'm pretty sure there were a number of GPS technology companies and precision ag startups that were working on automating farm equipment first. John Deere has many times been a late adopter in terms of technology, waiting to see what pans out in the market, then relying on the penetration of their dealer network to distribute proven technologies to a much wider audience.

JamisonM 11y ago
Yes, this a ridiculous PR puff-piece. JD saw something coming and got into the business along with a bunch of other companies. There are a lot of competing GPS technology companies that make products just as good if not better and sell well in the absence of the advantages that JD had from the start. Hemisphere GNSS, whose (Outback) products I use, has a superior product in my opinion and started a few years before Deere got interested in the business at all.
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  Or just journalistic naivete and laziness of not thoroughly researching a sector. It looks like the author normally covers consumer technology, so she probably doesn't know much about the agriculture or GPS industries. I would give her the benefit of the doubt of not knowing (which in journalism isn't really an excuse), but either way it's bad journalism.
  - mavhc 11y ago
    True of 99% of journalism, you know if you read articles about your field of expertise how wrong they are, they're just as wrong about everything else.

jfoster 11y ago

I think a lot of the commenters here are correct in pointing out that the problem John Deere have solved is very different from the problem that Google, Tesla, Uber are trying to solve. That said, I think there is a "human acceptance" piece necessary for autonomous vehicles to be allowed on roads. A lot of people are going to fear, dislike, or be otherwise opposed to sharing the road with autonomous vehicles. A lot of people simply don't believe that it is possible for an autonomous vehicle to handle certain driving situations. To be able to point to tractors driving themselves around fields for the past X years is valuable in getting humans to accept robotic cars.

aidos 11y ago
It's useful but I guess people will just raise that same reservation - just because they work in the field...blah blah blah. My guess is that insurance will force people's hands in the switch. Most accidents on the road are due to human error (I assume, or rather had there not been human involvement the situation could have been avoided). Let's assume that self driving technology reaches the safety level that most of us here believe it will. Insurers, hedging against risk will have to financially penalise manual driving, since it will carry a much higher risk. Hopefully that takes the irrational opposition out of the equation and let's the raw statistics take charge :)

aylons 11y ago

Not actually. John Deer doest not build vehicles, he builds machinery. John Deer machines work in a strict set of environments, and although they may be very sophisticated and react to a range of adverse situations, these situations are still much more predictable and the route much better known in advance than roads and streets. If the autonomous vehicle problem were dealing with different roads, pavements and other pre-programmed vehicles, the self driving car would be a thing from the 80s, together with the robot car welder.

joshstrange 11y ago

How about no.... Driving a tractor through a predetermined path in a predictable pattern is no where near the same as driving on our roads with human error and the like. Also I'm not about to get behind a company that won't let you service your own machinery.

raverbashing 11y ago

To be more clear, here's what JD equipment doesn't have to worry about that Google's does - Pedestrians - Other vehicles and obstacles (and automatically detecting them) - Roads - Traffic laws JDs tractors are choreographed, it's not really 'self-driving'

txdv 11y ago
also cats have seen a cat picked up by a corn harvester
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Yeah, but I guess even a human has difficulty picking those in a place with tall vegetation Lots of small mammals die this way :(
agumonkey 11y ago
Or even speed. What's the average speed of a tractor in exercise ? 15 mph ?[1] anticipation need, which was already pretty low in a field, gets even closer to zero. [1] quick googling says some countries impose speed limit of 20mph but I don't know if it's on public roads and not private land. http://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/road-rules-for-tractors-in-the-uk-and-europe.htm http://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/road-rules-for-tractors-in-th...
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Probably on public roads, speed is lower when harvesting
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    So I fail to see what Deere did. A 10mph, pretty stable, on mostly flat (curved, but locally flat) land, with almost nothing of its size to interfere (won't a beef move away if a tractor aims at him ?), except avoiding the occasional tree .. I fail to see what problem they had.
11y ago

peter303 11y ago

DARPA jump-started the industry with their three autonomous vehicle competitions a decade ago. Most of the entrants were university mechanical engineering departments. No one came close to completing the first challenge. But they got pretty good by the third one. Google and the auto indutry continued funding thereafter.

martincmartin 11y ago
The DARPA grand challenge was certainly a pivotal event, but I wouldn't say it jump-started the industry. The two biggest teams in the second race, from CMU and Stanford, were both spinoffs of the Field Robotics Center at CMU, which had been doing this for a long time: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tjochem/nhaa/Journal.html http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript705.htm http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript705.htm Disclosure: I was a grad student at CMU at the time, in the building, and saw a lot of this up close.

david_b 11y ago

I'd say Daimler and co. got there first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project Google has obviously taken taken that a lot further (no driver reacting every 9km) > "We kind of laugh when we see news stories about self-driving cars, because we've had that for years," Poole said. Yup, no wonder he is a farmer (to be fair: if you're running a tractor at 2 am you may well imagine there to be heavy traffic on the field...).

kriro 11y ago
Daimler is also doing quite a bit with self driving trucks. I'd guess they have to be a leader in that domain. Admittedly they weren't really on my radar until the recent news about their tests in Nevada.

roel_v 11y ago

What's especially laughable is the article's mention of robotic lawn mowers. I happen to have bought one today, and those things (although admittedly there are models that are more intelligent) just ride around randomly until they hit a hard object or the perimeter, which is signaled by a wire that is dug into the ground. An 'autonomous vehicle' this is not (or only for the most basic definition of the concept).

choward 11y ago
Yeah, might as well compare it to a Roomba too.
thomasfoster96 11y ago
The way robotic lawn mowers work sounds awfully like the beginner LEGO Mondstorms projects.

raldi 11y ago

Comparing this tractor to a self-driving car is like calling someone an ace pilot even though they don't know how to take off or land.

Coincoin 11y ago

Driving a car is a social exercise. The challenge is making something navigate through human chaos, not make it move. Even the article itself hints that comparing the two is kind of stupid: "[...]where there are few pesky pedestrians or federal rules to get in the way." and then immediately proceeds laughing at the general population ignorance because farmers did it first. I remember when I was a child, my father explained to me that depressing the right pedal makes the car go forward, the left one makes it stop and this round thing makes it turn. "WOW! Easy!" I exclaimed, "I know to drive now!" Yeah right. Elevators are automated. Subways are automated. Even mother fucking planes can fly and land themselves (with the right equipment). Yup those giant flying monsters containing hundreds of human souls got automated before our cars. But wait, Google is stupid because it didn't do it first. EDIT: missing sentence

dm2 11y ago

John Deere didn't invent the technology though, Autonomous Solutions Inc. (ASI) did. They partnered in ~2000. http://www.asirobots.com/news/ http://www.asirobots.com/news/ http://www.asirobots.com/farming/ http://www.asirobots.com/farming/ http://www.asirobots.com/products/mobius/ http://www.asirobots.com/products/mobius/

nas 11y ago
You sure? Satloc was doing GPS guidance for aerial guidance for decades (crop dusting planes). They adapted it for ag guidance in the 1990s I believe. This technology has been evolving for years and saying that John Deere or some single company invented it sounds like a gross oversimplification.
- deleted 11y ago
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mojoB 11y ago
ASI were hardly the first, and Deere had their AutoTrac system before they started working with ASI. > The Beeline Navigator was developed in 1993 by Australian engineer, Rob Mailer. [1] [1] http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/news/agriculture/machinery/general-news/agsystems-beeline-to-world-sales/33130.aspx http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/news/agriculture/mac...
- deleted 11y ago
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  - mojoB 11y ago
    I don't have any inside knowledge of the Deere system, but I'd be very surprised if it was. My guess is that most of the Deere stuff comes NavCom. That is certainly the case for their GPS system. > "NavCom's involvement with Deere & Company began with Deere's GreenStar precision farming system in 1994 and has expanded into many areas of Deere's product activities. The commitment by the most senior Deere management to information systems leadership motivated the NavCom shareholder-employees to join with Deere & Company," http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/deere--company-acquires-navcom-technology-inc-a-provider-of-precise-positioning-and-data-communications-77289562.html http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/deere--company-acqui...

funkyy 11y ago

So did any of Google Moon-shoots actually had ANY impact on society so far besides being a cool news story? It looks like most of their cool projects got to the point, where they stale and cannot move ahead.

ksk 11y ago

Instead of self-driving cars, I'd say focus on eliminating the need for "going somewhere"/vehicles in general. Would be so cool if we could just 'beam' in to work. 3D virtual presence. But hey, its not my money they're investing.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
How about 3D bio-printing you at work? Oh but at the end of the day, do you get rid of the copy, or get rid of you? Could be some trouble either way.

hellbanner 11y ago

Many years ago, I dreamed of huge roadways with wi-fi embedded in the road. Cars would broadcast their destination and the network would adjust the speed of all cars to facilitate a smooth entry to the freeway and subsequent navigation. Self-driving cars are really cool. However, if every car is trying to optimize for itself then traffic will still be an issue.

fixermark 11y ago

Spot-on but unimportant. "Apple didn't lead the mobile device revolution. Blackberry did." Technologies succeeding in the gauntlet of consumer electronics makes a bigger splash in public media---for obvious reasons---than those same technologies applied to the problems of specific trades.

edward 11y ago

Self-driving tractor in 1978: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3xS3eIHzLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3xS3eIHzLk

adaml_623 11y ago

How about we all just agree this is a click-bait article and we've all gone chomp on the hook. I don't want to write 'who cares' but realistically neither John Deer or Google did. There were gifted individuals at both companies who wrote the code and developed the hardware and one day someone will write a book and it might be an interesting read. To argue for JD or Google is just playing into the marketers hands. /rant

gech 11y ago

>But another is pure necessity: There's a labor crunch in rural America - young people move to the cities, leaving the average age of U.S. farmers at 58, according to the Department of Agriculture. Similar forces are pushing self-driving tech into other industrial sectors at a pace that outstrips the consumer market. > Oh sure, that's the reason. All the job seekers dried up.

callesgg 11y ago

It is more comparable to automated lawnmowers, than it is to selfdriving cars.

anon4 11y ago

Sure, but none of the engineers who work for John Deere would ever be allowed to publish their developments, nor would they get any public recognition for them.

dj_doh 11y ago

Last time I checked I didn't see any farming in my local main street. Not sure to what extent technology from John Deere can be used for public vehicle. May be not much.

vmorgulis 11y ago

In the most recent user guide (2013), they talk about "mapping". https://stellarsupport.deere.com/en_US/support/pdf/om/en/PFP13445_2630_userguide.pdf https://stellarsupport.deere.com/en_US/support/pdf/om/en/PFP... You can record a map with the GPS and replay it. It's a little bit like waypoints for drones. There are other companies that make driverless tractors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor It also reminds me the machines in Interstellar (the indian drone that can fly 10 years and the tractor).

cheetos 11y ago

Forgive my laziness, but the last time I did any long research about self-driving cars, I understood that the problem of night-time driving and driving in precipitation still hadn't been solved. Anyone know if this is still the case?

Animats 11y ago

Self-driving tractors are incredibly dumb. They just follow a predefined path using GPS. Most don't even have any obstacle sensing. They probably should at least have a basic obstacle detection radar, but at present, they don't. I saw the original John Deere differential GPS prototype tractor in use at Stanford many years ago. There used to be an empty field next to the Stanford horse barn where they tested. It's now a parking lot.

anigbrowl 11y ago

Will someone who works at Amazon and reads HN please ask Jeff Bezos to tell the Washington Post to grow out of this smartass fake journalism? Most people are well aware that agribusiness depends heavily on automation. Most people are equally well aware that it's a lot easier to drive around a field when you are the only thing in it than to drive on a public road. That's why you only need a driving license for the latter case. The entire article is one giant straw man fallacy.

fredkbloggs 11y ago
> Most people are well aware that agribusiness depends heavily on automation. While it doesn't necessarily invalidate your criticism, this couldn't be less true. Most people in the Washington Post's reader base have exactly zero awareness of agriculture, full stop. Food comes in a box they buy at the supermarket, and that's the extent of their knowledge. If they have any thoughts beyond that, it's probably either an understanding of farming they got from a quaint children's book, or some kind of poorly-reasoned Monsanto/GMO FUD they heard at a fashionable dinner party. The idea that they know what kind of ag equipment is on the market, what it does, how it works, or what it costs is ludicrous.

gukov 11y ago

Time to buy $DE