March 28, 2024

Future of farming: Driverless tractor pulls grain cart, synchs with combine during harvest

FAIRBURY, Ill. — The OMNiDRIVE system gives combine drivers the ability to operate a driverless tractor pulling a grain cart.

“This will be the future of farming,” said Bryan Fehr, location manager for Jenner Precision during an Autonomy Demo Day, hosted by Jenner Ag. “Today the system is available for 8R Series John Deere tractors and by fall we will have it for Case Magnum tractors.”

“The system is based off coverage and boundaries,” said Eric Post, precision ag specialist with Raven. “There are two points you can place anywhere in the field — a stage point and an unload point.”

These points must be within the field boundary and the field coverage which is wherever the combine has harvested.

“The unload point will be where the trucks are going to be, and once the grain cart is full, you can hit the unload button and the tractor will go to the designated area,” Post said.

The combine operator uses a computer tablet to operate the system.

“If there’s a muddy area you don’t want the grain cart to go through, you can set up an inter-boundary,” Fehr said. “Draw a circle around the wet spot and the tractor will not drive through it.”

Components on the tractor include five cameras — a forward-facing camera and four hazard cameras.

“The purpose of the hazard cameras is if anyone is around the tractor and the combine operator tries to control it, they will not allow the system to run,” Post said. “There is also a radar sensor mounted on the front of the tractor to pick up any object that has mass.”

With the synch process, the tractor comes to the combine so the combine can dump into the grain cart.

“As the tractor approaches the combine, the tractor will match the speed of the combine,” Post said. “Once they are in synchronization, there are arrows on the user interface and you can move the tractor three feet forward or backward or one foot left or right.”

There is safety beacon mounted on the roof of the tractor that will display three colors — orange, red or green.

“Green means the system is in bypass and it also means it is safe to approach,” Post said. “Orange indicates it is in autonomous and red is for emergency stop.”

The e-stop is a hand held device that has a big red button.

“When you press that button the tractor will stop and it can’t be controlled by the person in the combine,” Post said. “There is always an e-stop mounted in the combine and you can have as many hand held e-stops as you want.”

Learning to operate the OMNiDRIVE is relatively simple, said Paul Bruns, sales specialist for Raven.

“We are spending from one hour to half a day for training,” he said. “For one guy in Texas, I spent a half hour with him on a simulator and a trainer rode with him for 10 acres and he was running the system on his own.”

Using an autonomous system, Bruns said, helps farming operations reallocate personal.

“It’s how we take someone from a job that has a $20 per hour value and reallocate them to a $100 per hour value that is a more important job like starting tillage or seeding cover crops,” he said. “Or, having another truck driver to eliminate a potential bottleneck in the operation.”

However, Bruns said, there is additional concentration required for the operator of the combine since he is controlling two machines at the same time.

“We recommend he runs as much autosteer as he can so he can focus on what’s going on with the grain cart and not focused on steering the combine,” he said.

Bruns, who grew up on a small farm in southeastern Minnesota, has been working to develop autonomous machines since 2018.

“I still get goose bumps three years later when I see the tractor synch with the combine,” Bruns said.

“Currently we have over 80 systems committed for this year,” he said. “Farmers who are interested in a system should get in touch with a dealer as soon as possible.”

Raven is working to develop the OMNiDRIVE system for more tractors.

“In the future we will see additional operations like tillage,” Bruns said. “But there is a lot of development to do to get to that stage.”

In college, one of Bruns’ agronomy teachers told him that the face of agriculture had changed more in five years than the 20 years that preceded it.

“That was in the late ‘90s and now I think it is changing more in two years than the 20 that preceded it,” he said. “Technology is speeding up the change in agriculture.”

For more information about precision tools, go to www.jennerag.com/precision.

Martha Blum

Martha Blum

Field Editor