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See & Spray
Courtesy of John Deere · Press kit, editorial use (opens deere.com)

See & Spray

by John DeereUS

ScalingStage 5 of 5

Commercial on large sprayers; used on over a million acres in 2024.

Updated Mar 2022Checked 25 Sep0 updates this week

Milestones

Next · Expansion to more sprayer models and crops
  1. See & Spray Ultimate launchedMar 2022Complete.
  2. Over one million acres covered2024Complete.
  3. Expansion to more sprayer models and cropsNowCurrent milestone.

Most important updates

  • Mar 2022
  • Sep 2017

Current obstacles

  • Green-on-green detectionTelling weeds from crop of similar colour and size is much harder than spotting weeds on bare soil.

Physics limits

  • At speed, every millisecond moves the nozzleAt 15 mph a sprayer covers about 7 metres per second, so 100 ms of delay shifts the spray 0.7 m. Seeing, deciding and firing must all happen within a few hundredths of a second.
  • A green weed in a green crop looks alikeTiny weeds at first leaf can be a few millimetres across and share colour with the crop. Telling them apart needs millimetre-scale pixels and shape cues, which blur with motion, dust and low sun.
  • Fine droplets drift in the windSmall spray droplets (under about 0.15 mm) float and blow sideways before landing. Hitting only the weed limits droplet size and wind conditions, trading precision against coverage.

How it works

3 parts
A spray nozzle on a sprayer boom: See & Spray switches nozzles like this on and off one by one when its cameras spot a weed
A spray nozzle on a sprayer boom: See & Spray switches nozzles like this on and off one by one when its cameras spot a weedPhoto: Dirk Philipp / UA System Division of Agriculture · CC BY-SA 2.0 (opens flickr.com)
See

Cameras along the boom

Dozens of cameras spaced along the sprayer boom photograph the ground ahead as the machine drives at field speed.

Decide

Onboard computers spot weeds

Computers compare each image with a trained model to tell weeds from crop or soil, in a fraction of a second.

Spray

Only the nozzle over the weed fires

Each nozzle opens only when a weed passes beneath it, cutting herbicide use compared with spraying the whole field.

Spec sheet

SpecSee & Spray
Avg herbicide savings (2024)59%R (reported)
Boom width120 ftR (reported)
Cameras on boom36R (reported)

R reported by the company

Update log

2 updates

Mar 2022

  • Minor: PressHardware

Sep 2017

  • Major: PressCommercial

About John Deere

The team behind See & Spray

John Deere

Autonomous tractors, See & Spray, precision ag

The world's largest farm equipment maker. By buying startups such as Blue River and Bear Flag Robotics, it leads in camera-guided spraying and self-driving tractor kits, aiming for fully autonomous corn and soybean farming by 2030.

  • Showed a self-driving 8R tractor at CES 2022 and a 16-camera second-gen kit at CES 2025.
  • See & Spray sprays only the weeds; Deere reported 59% less herbicide on average in 2024.
  • Second-gen kits go from limited use in 2025 to full release in 2026.

deere.com (opens deere.com)Company profile →

Founded
1837189 yrs
Headquarters
United States
Status
Public
Listed
DE (opens google.com)NYSE
Valuation
public
Works in
AgricultureSelf-driving tractorsRoboticsAI
Coverage
2 programs · 7 updateslatest 1 Aug 2025checked 25 Sep
Partners
SpaceX (Starlink)
Suppliers
NVIDIA
People
John May (opens deere.com)Chairman & CEOJahmy Hindman (opens deere.com)CTO
Primer