Self-Driving Cars Are Coming, but Self-Driving Tractors Are Already Here

Kaleigh Rogers for Motherboard:

Self-driving tractors are becoming more common. A John Deere spokesperson told me the company currently has about 200,000 self-driving tractors on farms around the world, from the US to Germany. And they’re just one example of a major investment that the agriculture sector is making in artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.

According to John Deere, between 60 and 70 percent of the crop acreage in North America today is farmed using GPS-driven tractors. (Source)

Farmers have been inhabiting the future for a long time—self-driving tractors have been on the go for 15 years. Industrial farms are big business; they feature wide-open spaces; and they operate on private property. All make of this makes farms ideal test beds for tech that includes autonomous vehicles, drones, artificial intelligence, and smart objects.