Self-driving Deere tractors to be made in Waterloo

Deere officials unveiled the tractor at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The vehicle will be part of the company’s “8R” tractor series, which is made in Waterloo.

“We can confirm that the tractor will be made in Waterloo with limited availability this year,” said Kelly Henderson, a spokesperson at Deere’s Waterloo operations.

The head of a local economic development organization welcomed the news.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled,” said Cary Darrah, executive director of Grow Cedar Valley. “And it’s not surprising, since Deere’s always been on the cutting edge. We will work with Deere and other manufacturers to help prepare a workforce to help with these visions, and these successes.” She also said the new product should benefit Deere’s local suppliers.

Deere officials at the Las Vegas show indicated the development is as historically significant to the company and the industry as when company namesake John Deere himself inventing the self-cleaning steelcast plow 165 years ago in 1837; and when Deere entered the tractor business in 1918 with its acquisition of the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Co. in Waterloo, manufacturers of the famous “Waterloo Boy” two-cylinder tractor.

The company has been adding automated improvements to its machinery for 20 years, including its GreenStar global positioning system technology and its AutoTrac assisted steering system. In August, Deere announced it had acquired the four-year-old Silicon Valley company Bear Flag Robotics, a software firm based in Newark, Calif., for $250 million.

At the time of that acquisition, Bear Flag Robotics hailed itself as being “committed to developing the most advanced autonomous tractors possible.” The firm said it became involved with Deere in 2019 in Deere’s “startup collaborator” program, enabling Deere “to deepen its connection with startup companies whose technology has the potential to add value for their customers.

“Since the completion of the program, we have successfully deployed autonomous tractors solutions at multiple farms across the United States,” Bear Flag Robotics officials said. Pilot experiments with autonomous tractors could be seen in some farm fields in Northeast Iowa in recent years.

“The autonomous tractor serves a specific purpose: feeding the world,” Deere officials said at the Las Vegas unveiling. “The global population is expected to grow from about 8 billion to nearly 10 billion people by 2050, increasing the global food demand by 50 percent. Furthermore, farmers must feed this growing population with less available land and skilled labor,” in addition to perennial challenges like climate changes and pest control.

“To use the autonomous tractor, farmers only need to transport the machine to a field and configure it for autonomous operation,” Deere officials said. “Using John Deere Operations Center Mobile,” a computer application downloaded to a phone, tablet or other computerized mobile device, “they can swipe from left to right to start the machine.

“The autonomous tractor has six pairs of stereo cameras, which enables 360-degree obstacle detection and the calculation of distance … ensuring it is operating where it is supposed to, and is within less than an inch of accuracy,” the Deere announcement explained. Camera images are projected through a “neural network,” a computer system that operates similar to the human brain and its nervous system.

“While the machine is working, the farmer can leave the field to focus on other tasks, while monitoring the machine’s status from their mobile device,” company officials said.

The several facilities making up Deere’s Waterloo operations constitute the Moline, Ill., company’s largest manufacturing complex in North America. The company’s large row-crop tractors are made here. Additionally, Deere’s Product Engineering Center in Cedar Falls is the hub of the company’s new product research and development efforts.

Over the past couple of years, Deere reconfigured its assembly operations and was able to roll out a new 8R tractor product line here in 2020 — with extensive precautions in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic — to strong product acceptance and ongoing heightened market demand. The company is coming off a record earnings year and is predicting another for 2022.

Grow Cedar Valley works closely with local schools and postsecondary institutions on workforce development. Darrah indicated the new autonomous tractor should generate interest for prospective workers to get the training they need to produce such products.

“We’re committed to helping relay this information and these opportunities to the workforce that we will need to get it done,” she said.