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Monarch Tractor - It's Electric, Autonomous and Smart

The Monarch tractor is a great-looking farm implement.

Monarch calls its tractor “driver optional,” as it can be operated as a conventional vehicle. It performs programmed tasks without a driver or an operator can use interactive “Gesture” and “Shadow” modes to have it follow workers in the field. The tractor is designed with roll and collision-prevention and has 360-degree computer vision. It can collect and analyze more than 240GB of crop data per day. That information can be used to make adjustments in the kinds of implements the vehicle is using and provide long-term yield estimates, crop growth stages and plant health metrics. The vehicle’s battery system can also serve as a remote power supply.

(Via Forbes)

Although autonomous farm vehicles go way back (see automatic cultivators from John Campbell's 1930 story Piracy Preferred), many people were exposed to this idea in the 2015 movie Interstellar:

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/1/2021)

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