New Innovation - Autonomous Seeding Technology From Saskatchewan - Impressive Video

[Guest]

but can it decide whether to go around or through it ?
second pic is same slough , most of it grew

[Guest]

[bucket]

I don't doubt this is a good thing....but one glitch and who pays the bill?

Seeding the neighbors field or running a line thru it accidentally?

Guys around here have sued neighbors for turning the combine around over the quarter line....I shit you not....

[stonepicker]

Comon Furrow whats five 15 foot Dots going to cost im guessing $400000 a piece. Now are you going to trust em around those 8ft deep drainage cuts, those power poles, those hidden sloughs in stubble, that fence line or whatever. Let me guess they are going transport just fine. What are the going to do when they meet something else big on the road. And they are going to fill themselves too? Gps satellites move, electronics glitch, wires rub through or break, cameras get dirty, sensors go the fritz. Will it run check itself and notice that the secondary is pulled outa the seed boot? Is it going to able to know that its plugged with a lump.
If it can go wrong it will, is one guy going to be able to baby sit all five Dots? Or is that going to be a robot too LOL. GL

Exactly, way too many negative variables. If i owned an electronics company the first guy i would try to hire would be the volkswagon engineer who figured out how to bypass the emissions tests. I'm sure he has other smart ideas.

[WiltonRanch]

Where autonomous tech will make the first inroads is the orchards and any small scale high value crops. In china I believe they have drones which can spray small fields. Orchards have enough bug problems so sending a drone in is safer on the gizzard. As far as large scale low value field crops out here I don't see any value. Once you write enough algorithms to address all the variables the cost of software is phenomenal let alone the equipment. If anything manufacturers should be putting more into improving software and durability of components. For what you pay you should be getting the quality of industrial or aeronautic components.

[theplowboy]

Seeding is a critical operation and I don't think we will ever see totally driverless vehicles but it might happen....it just seems hard to trust machines to do these task.

I am looking forward to seeing it in operation at ag in motion and talking to the engineers who have worked on it.