Self-driving tractor enables autonomous farming

A California startup confirmed it has delivered the first examples of the world’s “first commercially available electric, driver-optional smart tractor.”

Bay Area-based Monarch has sold six units of its zero-emissions Founder Series MK-V to leading wine, spirit and beer producer Constellation Brands.

It’s being claimed that the MK-V has the potential to reshape agriculture as we know it thanks to its use of electrification, automation and data analysis to help farmers reduce their carbon footprint, improve safety, streamline operations and increase profitability.

What Monarch terms its “driver optional” functionality comes via a suite of autonomous and robotics hardware and software tech, including the Nvidia Jetson edge artificial intelligence platform. This enables the MK-V to perform pre-programmed tasks without a driver – or allows an operator to implement “shadow mode,” which sees the tractor follow a worker performing a task.

Several tractors can be remotely operated by a single individual at any one time, which is hoped will help to address an alarming shortage of tractor drivers in the industry.

But the functionality goes well beyond that. The MK-V’s deep learning suite allows what might be considered autonomous farming, with crop data collected, analyzed and processed daily thanks to an array of sensors and cameras, some of which are 3D.

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