John Deere and Caterpillar seemed to be in a competition for the largest machines at CES 2023, each showing massive vehicles equipped with plenty of artificial intelligence and sophisticated sensors behind their brawn.
The gonzo set piece at Deere’s booth was a huge Deere 412R sprayer vehicle with a 120-foot boom, featuring 36 cameras and See & Spray Ultimate technology based on Deere’s massive database of what a weed looks like in all sort of light and weather conditions, all powered by Nvidia GPUs.
The entire thing sells for $600,000 and extra for a subscription to get a precise spray regimen, depending on which weeds bloom and how long the spray is needed. Some farmers have to weed a single crop repeatedly, so the selling point is getting reduction in herbicides and pesticides.
At the side of the sprayer, Deere showed off another innovation, an ExactShot planter, designed to reduce fertilizer needed by 60%. Instead of shooting a stream of liquid fertilizer over the seeds, ExactShot uses sensors and robotics precisely aimed at each seed. It can precisely plant and spray 30 seeds a second. A vision sensor registers when each individual seed is going into the soil, while a robot sprays about 0.2 ML of fertilizer directly onto the seed exactly when needed, then stops the stream until the next seed is planted.
“There’s a big pull for this technology,” said Jorge Heraud, vice president of automation and autonomy at Deere and formerly CEO of Blue River Technology, acquired by Deere in 2017. “Farmers are very much innovators when the tech is there.”
Deere also stuck a battery electric-powered excavator in the corner, painted gray and yellow. Hiding behind it was a model of a liquid-cooled battery prototype from Deere-acquired Kreisel Electric. Deere is also working on a battery electric tractor to debut possibly in 2026 that will be painted Deere’s trademark green and yellow used for its ag machines.
The company has set a goal of more than 20 electric and hybrid electric construction equipment models by 2026.
Deere is on a smart tech roll after showing its fully autonomous tractor last year—the world’s first--that has been deployed on farms in the northern plains of the US and will be expanded to more locations this year.
RELATED: John Deere posed actors in fields to train AI for self-driving tractors
CEO John May made the case for smart farming equipment in a CES keynote, amid a shortage of farm workers and growing needs for food as population growth continues to explode. The global population is expected to grow from 8 billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050, pushing farmers to increase production by up to 70% on today’s arable land.
Across the aisle at CES, Caterpillar allowed visitors to climb atop a massive mining truck, and many people took selfies while standing in front of its tires that towered over them. The 100-ton Cat 777 off-highway truck operates autonomously. Actually, Caterpillar said it already has deployed 560 of the trucks in 24 sites on three continents and has for more than a decade, but apparently the public hasn’t seen the equipment company as a high-tech company as well.
One part of its booth was devoted to letting users use two remote operating stations to connect to equipment hundreds of miles away. One was operating a Cat large dozer and the other an excavator. CES visitors lined up for a chance to pilot a dozer remotely, a twist on watching children at a playground or beach play with toy trucks and tractors.