Driverless tractors in 5 years in Cendrecourt

This is a response to a previous post Driverless trucks before driverless cars . A few weeks ago I was discussing with a french farmer from Cendrecourt, a village located in the east of France. He just returned from the “Salon de l’agriculture” in Paris which the big annual convention for agriculture in France. In this convention every french region is here to advertize its specialties. It’s a must for french president to come in order to “caresser le cul des vaches” which translated into upper-french means “make sure you are appreciated by farmers and that they will vote for you in the next election”.

It’s also a place for companies such as John Deere to present their latest innovations. When he came back from the “Salon de l’agriculture” I asked my friend about automatization. I was already aware of machines that are completely automatizing cow milking. He thinks that in 5 years i.e. 2018, in Cendrecourt, there will be some fully automatized tractor for plowing and other tasks. In terms of using shared service, leasing and renting, most french farmers are already accustomed to this way of managing their equipment. For instance there are SLAs for most of their equipment. Most probably they will share this new driverless tractors as plowing could be done round the clock.

Farming world will jump directly to “step 3: shared driverless cars and transforming our way of life” before regular car users are still at “step 0: today’s self parking feature and Google cars”.

Note: To have a self driving tractor to autonomous plow a field, you have to do it manually once. Sometimes, depending on the soil you have to modify plowing depth when plowing a field, and you have to teach the tractor to do the same.

Note2: Driverless tractors can only operate in the same kind of “closed environment” as driverless trucks in mines

Driverless trucks before driverless cars

As of now, driverless cars cost more than regular cars because of the additional sensors and additional computer power needed to manage all these sensor’s data. It’s clear that the added cost will dwindle during the following years as driverless cars will become more “mainstream”.

This “driverless” added cost might, soon, not be so big anyway when considering a truck driven by a professional driver.

In a 1st step, a driver will have to be present, but the driverless functionality will be a great help for him. Legally, he might even be allowed to drive longer in the day, which would improve its productivity from its employer point of view. The overall balance between cost of driverless feature and improved productivity due to assisted driving would then very soon tilt in favor of driverless trucks.

In a ultimate step (step 3), a driver might not even be needed (technically and legally). At this stage we can expect driverless functionality to be well below a truck driver’s yearly cost.

Driverless trucks are most mature in Australia mines

Before having driverless trucks on our road, they will arrive very soon or are already there in controlled environments such as mines. In these “closed” environments V2V or V2I technologies make sense as opposed to regular highway.

Typically in Australia where Rio Tinto is using some Komatsu’s driverless trucks and Autonomous Haulage System—Komatsu's Pioneering Technology Deployed at Rio Tinto Mine in Australia.

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Talking about another mining project in South Australia from Iron Road Limited:
Despite all he has achieved, Mr Scholz (Wudinna’s mayor) realises without the mine Wudinna faces an increasingly difficult future. "They will have driverless tractors within 10 years and if the trend continues we won't be able to sustain our community," he said.

Truck driver might not be a job with a great future anymore.