Posted on 08/05/2015 2:33:18 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Drones and driverless tractors – is this the future of farming?
With more than half of the British countryside being managed by precision farming methods, is the new agricultural revolution gathering pace?
Peter Moore
Monday 20 July 2015 07.30 BST Last modified on Monday 20 July 2015 07.33 BST
On 7 July 1964 the Daily Express published a satirical cartoon, a send-up of Britain’s farming community as it struggled to adapt from its old, rustic world to a new, technological one. The cartoon was set at a Royal Show at a point in the near future. One side of the frame featured a rowdy beer tent, reserved for “drivers and drivers only”. On the other was a marquee with the sign: “Order your Radio-Controlled Tractor”. A driver leans over to his beer-slugging mate. “Bert, I don’t want to depress you”, he cautions, “but your governor’s just bought one of those new tractors that don’t need a driver.”
The Express cartoon was recently cited by Professor Simon Blackmore, the head of engineering at Harper Adams University in Shropshire, to demonstrate the progress the farming community has made over the last 50 years. The ludicrous has now become the commonplace.
Ian Beecher-Jones, a precision farming consultant, recently told Farmers Weekly magazine that about 60% of Britain’s farmland is now being managed by precision methods, which include sensor systems, cameras, drones, microphones, virtual field maps, analytics and GPS-guided tractors. These technologies – examples of the so-called internet of things – are fuelling what is being called the “new agricultural revolution”.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Tractors and combines were GPS guided back in the 90’s.
I still prefer your Ford over this GPS stuff.
Personally, I’m a JD 2 cylinder fan. That slow running pop pop pop in the distance of a someone doing summer fallow is just as clear today as when I heard it as a kid. I own a industrial version, the JD440 made in 58. It’s still in use.
Drones and driverless tractors – is this the future of farming?
Way back then the operator of large equipment was little more than a passenger as it made its way through the fields, planting, fertilizing and harvesting.
And battery tech is exploding right now. Drones of ten years from now, compared to modern drones, will be like Mustangs compared to Model T’s.
I am a Massey Ferguson type myself.
Dad and an uncle still have quite a few operational.
Here are three of them from a few years back in the T2i days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSouzl1erxo
Exactly. Already the “driver” is a bit like the engineer in the cockpit of commercial jetliners in the years before the law was changed to no longer require their presence.
So will this mean we’ll be offering citizen, voting cards and free college tuition to illegal immigrant drones?
Looks like you could use some weights up front, that 2-bottom cutting heavy unbroken soil seems to have the front-end running a little light. Great shot!
Legally born(manufactured) in a U.S. factory, programmed to vote "Conservative"(RINO won't count.) :-)
Nice pic. working at yours or your son-in-law’s?
Mine. It was when I first cut the garden. To be honest, The two things I use that tractor for now are grading my 1/4 mile driveway (with a steep grade in the first 100 yards) and bush-hogging.
The small diameter of the back tires is what causes that look. Notice all the air space between the tires and the fenders.
That’s a Ferguson tractor. Initially appeared in Scotland and the British Isles. Henry Ford liked the mounted plows and other implements so much that he bought the rights to pattern his own start-up line of tractors and implements after the “Ferguson System” as it was called. Over the past 75 years, Ford farm machinery has gone through several iterations, ending up renamed Ford-New Holland, and now strictly New Holland.
“Exactly. Already the “driver” is a bit like the engineer in the cockpit of commercial jetliners in the years before the law was changed to no longer require their presence.”
And their presence will likely always be required when lives are at stake. Unless we are stupid enough to introduce true artificial intelligence into the wild.
A machine that can’t truly “think” cannot compensate for every new scenario.
You can minimize the scenarios by having “closed” systems though. Things like farms, monorails and closed sections of highway will become 100% driver-less.
But buses on the open road and planes in the open sky will likely have human supervision unless true AI comes.
Go ahead and let your expensive equipment roam about on the farm all by itself. What could go wrong?
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