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A comment on U.S. Farmers Are Being Bled by the Tractor Monopoly. Parent comment

Re:U.S. Farmers Are Being Bled by the Tractor Monopoly by astrodust on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:33PM (#19903643)
Tractors usually move at a deliberately very slow speed, so piloting a vehicle moving 3mph over terrain utterly devoid of obstacles, and which often has some kind of automatic driving assist, is really not that hard.

Some of the more sophisticated tractors are like being in a plane on auto-pilot. Some you can even pilot remotely if you're really not in the mood to drive it, like a gigantic Roomba.

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Re:U.S. Farmers Are Being Bled by the Tractor Monopoly by naikrovek on Monday May 13, 2019 @05:13PM (#19904023)
I don't think any can be officially piloted remotely, but clever farmers have done this.

Legal fears scare tractor manufacturers from making something truly autonomous; there's supposed to be a human in the driver's seat at all times. That said, John Deere has had self-driving tractors for almost 20 years, now. And I mean they automatically steer themselves, they don't just go straight for a predetermined amount of time (though they can do that, too.)

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