The pathway to autonomy is far from linear. A long list of technological advancements is needed to make a machine operate fully autonomously: GNSS positioning, steering control, high accuracy corrections, perception technology, and the list goes on. At PTx Trimble (formerly Trimble Agriculture), the advancement in precision agriculture we have built for more than 20 years has laid the foundation on which today’s technologies can thrive.
Our earliest developments in GNSS positioning, guidance, and mapping have served as stepping stones to the technology available today — including autonomy.
The Society of Automotive Engineers categorizes autonomous vehicles in a series of stages: No Automation, Driver Assistance, Partial Automation, Conditional Automation, High Automation, and Full Automation. What does that look like?
- Stage Zero – No Automation » The driver has full control of all tasks relating to the vehicle.
- Stage One – Driver Assistance » The vehicle has a single automated system.
- Stage Two – Partial Automation » The vehicle can provide steering and acceleration automation.
- Stage Three – Conditional Automation » The vehicle can control most driving tasks.
- Stage Four – High Automation » The vehicle performs all driving tasks under certain conditions.
- Stage Five – Full Automation » The vehicle performs all driving tasks under all conditions.
Today, the agriculture industry as a whole falls somewhere between stages two and three, partial automation and conditional automation.
High Automation is Here
Although adoption across the industry sits between partial and conditional automation, PTx Trimble’s OutRun platform brings high automation to the forefront of modern farming for your harvest and tillage operations.
OutRun, an autonomous retrofit kit, is a self-contained solution that enables autonomous operations without the need to buy a new tractor. In a world where skilled labor can be challenging to find, OutRun allows farming operations to deploy their skilled labor to other critical tasks and enables a more efficient spring and harvest.
The OutRun platform currently supports autonomous grain cart and tillage operations, allowing greater efficiency in farming’s busiest seasons and versatility across the farm.
Get Your Tillage Done Sooner
PTx Trimble’s latest platform kit, OutRun | Tillage, allows field work to be completed without an operator in the cab. This means hitting the most optimal tillage window in the fall while the combine is still running, locking in the greatest nutrient availability come spring.
The window for tillage is short in the fall, and becomes even shorter depending on harvest limitations like breakdowns, lack of labor and inclement weather. Wait too long to till those fields, and residue breakdown decreases, providing less nutrient availability in the soil come planting season. Your planting window is also limited, giving you a select number of days to plant in optimal conditions to give each plant the greatest growth potential. OutRun | Tillage unlocks new possibilities for your farm, helping you get fieldwork done when the timing is right, giving you confidence in finishing on time and ensuring the greatest nutrient uptake as crops germinate and emerge from the soil.
Designed for Efficiency
OutRun | Tillage works through a series of components that sense the tractor’s surroundings and plan the most optimal tillage workflow. As the operator, you simply calibrate the system, then drive the boundaries and set obstacles like trees and waterways that should be avoided. The tractor can then be placed in autonomous mode and controlled through the smartphone app. With the ability to set the system and walk away, monitoring and managing tillage operations remotely can be done anywhere in the world through 360-degree live feeds, images and alerts. If the system senses an object in its potential path, it will come to a stop and send an alert through the app, giving you the ability to override it if needed. No wondering if it’s doing what you told it to; just complete confidence and oversight based on your comfortability with the technology.
OutRun revolutionizes the way work is performed, freeing up operators for performing other tasks – planting, tending livestock and showing up to baseball games. You’ll not only get your time back, but the confidence that your workflow matches the greatest potential for success.
Autonomy has come a long way since the early days of steering automation and will continue to influence the way farming is done forfuture generations. The goal of autonomy has never been to remove farmers from the story, but to allow them to work smarter and more efficiently in a world where food production and livelihoods matter, but so does living the life you’ve worked so hard to build.
OutRun is commercially available in North America, Canada & Australia. Currently compatible with John Deere 8R IVT and Fendt 900 tractors.
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