[Qworg]

Deere's recent patent filings point to a totally autonomous managed fleet of farm equipment. They've had a long standing relationship with NREC out of CMU to develop autonomous and semi-autonomous systems.

In terms of accuracy, here's a metric to think about: due to fewer overlaps and misses, yields were up 7.6% and cost savings were up 6.8% - and this was with just recent tech advances.

[ihsw]

Where are you getting those numbers from? Surely such improvements would be fairly isolated to an acre or two, rather than hundreds of acres. Those numbers (6.8% and 7.6%) aren't in the article.

[Sanddancer]

At an acre or two, you'll be doing most of the work by hand, with using push tools -- rototillers and the like -- for the occasional tough part. These sorts of process improvements are one of those economies of scale things that really only start making sense when you're dealing with an amount of land that you can't just eyeball.

[ihsw]

Yes, I agree completely. That's exactly why I'm suspicious of the numbers the parent quoted.