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John Deere

Autonomous tractors, See & Spray, precision ag

USpublicest. 1837deere.com (opens deere.com)Checked 25 Sep

The brief

Analyst view
  • 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.

Technical approach

As reported
Perception

Stereo cameras and AI

Pairs of cameras build a 360° 3D view; AI trained on field data spots obstacles, people and field edges, and stops if unsure.

Retrofit

Kits, not new tractors

Autonomy is sold as add-on hardware and software for existing 8R, 9RX and orchard tractors.

Targeted spraying

See & Spray

Cameras across a 120-ft boom spot weeds at speed and fire only the nozzles above them, instead of spraying the whole field.

Connectivity

Remote monitoring via Starlink

Machines send data to Deere's Operations Center for monitoring by phone; Starlink covers farms with no cell signal.

Programs

John Deere, two programs

Updated 1 Aug 2025
Autonomy kits (8R, 9RX, 5ML)Bolt-on cameras and computers that let big tractors till fields and spray orchards with nobody in the cab, supervised from a phone app.DeployNextFull release of second-gen tillage autonomy · 2026Updated 1 Aug 2025View program →See & SpraySprayer booms with cameras that spot weeds while driving and spray only those, using far less herbicide than spraying everything.ScalingNextExpansion to more sprayer models and cropsUpdated 1 Mar 2022View program →
Research · Proto · Pilot · Deploy · Scaling

Research & demos

2 items

Open technical problems

Open · Active · Partial
  • Surprises in messy fieldsActive research

    Dust, crop residue, animals and half-hidden people are hard to detect; a miss can be fatal, so machines stop often and need a human.

  • Right to repairOpen

    Software locks on equipment have drawn FTC and state action; autonomy makes farmers even more dependent on Deere's software.

Peers

Self-driving tractors · 2

Company & funding

HQ
US
Founded
1837

Partners & customers

1 supplier · 1 partner
  • Supplier
    NVIDIA

    GPU compute for autonomy kits and See & Spray

  • Partner
    SpaceX (Starlink)

    Satellite connectivity for machines, announced 2024

People

Key people
Primer