Update
3 Feb 2022

John Deere - Autonomous Tractor
At CES 2022 John Deere revealed their fully-autonomous Deere 8R 410 tractor, announcing that it is ready for production and will be available to farmers in the US later in 2022.
6 Jan 2022

John Deere Reveals Fully Autonomous Tractor
John Deere has revealed a fully autonomous tractor that's ready for large-scale production. The machine combines Deere's 8R tractor, TruSet-enabled chisel plow, GPS guidance system, and new advanced technologies. The autonomous tractor will be available to farmers later this year.
External press release
21 Sep 2021

Alaka'i Technologies' Hydrogen Powered eVTOL Skai is on a Mission
Offering a sleek design and premium passenger experience, a radically simple fault-tolerant system with redundant levels of safety and reliability, an airframe-parachute, and hydrogen as its fuel source, Skai is poised to be the safest, cleanest and most versatile air mobility solution. A key part of Skai's innovation is the use of clean, zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells for its power source.
Update
10 Jun 2021

Nidec Japan
Nidec is one of the world's largest motor manufacturers run tightly for cash and gaining advanced technology mainly by acquisition.
External press release
12 Oct 2020

Pontifax AgTech Closes $302 Million Food and AgTech Fund
Firm's Second Fund Oversubscribed, Hits Hard Cap
Full profile interview
5 Sep 2020

Forte Projects LLC
Forte is partnered with Best Circuits and VMG to manufacture an electric motor pump relevant for battery cooling in heavy-duty electric vehicles.
Topic overview
16 Aug 2020

Robotic implements: weeding and beyond
This is the 5th article in our series of articles focused on agricultural robotics.
In this brief article we consider the trends towards vision enabled precision implements (tractor be pulled) enabling ultraprecision site-specific action such as precision weeding.
Youtube
31 Jul 2020

Electric Vehicles in Construction, Agriculture & Mining
Join Dr Peter Harrop in his latest presentation on Electric Vehicles in Construction, Agriculture & Mining, a $100 Billion Market Soon.
8 Jul 2020

Electric Vehicles in Agriculture: Now is the Time
Cars electrify, now farm vehicles. The new 215-page IDTechEx report, "Electric Vehicles and Robotics in Agriculture 2020-2030" explains. This is a drill-down from the popular report, "Electric Vehicles in Construction, Agriculture and Mining 2020-2030".
1 Jun 2020

Agricultural Robots and AI: A Question of When and Not If
Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will drive a deep and transformative change in the agricultural world during the coming decades. Seeing, localising, and taking plant-specific intelligent action are no longer the exclusive realm of humans.
Background
21 May 2020

Precision Makers
A Dutch company that is doing its trials in Australia using off the shelf tractor, a Fendt 936 and even a John Deere 8R, equipped with an autonomic system from PROBOTIQ (a subsidiary of Precision Makers).
Update interview
19 May 2020

Farmwise
FarmWise is based in San Francisco and has raised $20M (there are 55 people now. Established in 2017). It seeks to offer to robotics together with AI-based services. Its tech roadmap is to go from autonomous weeding to plant-level farming data to autonomous farming.
Update
19 May 2020

Blue River Technology
Blue River Technology is one of the best funded automated agricultural robotic companies. It has raised $30.35 in two rounds of Series A and B from 2012 to 2015. Its investors include Khosla Ventures, Syngenta Ventures and Monsanto Growth Ventures which are the venture arms of Syngenta and Monsanto, respectively. It was acquired by John Deere for $305M in 2017.
14 Feb 2020

Off-Road Vehicle Makers Electrify to Become as Large as Car Companies
Vehicles for construction, agriculture and mining CAM have become one industry served by giants such as Caterpillar, CNH Industrial, John Deere and Komatsu but also small businesses making the new requirements such as drone systems and weeding and mine survey robots.
Event summary
16 Dec 2019

Escapers from Peak Car
At the recent Future of Transportation Conference in Vienna (Dec 2019), most speakers were warning of the impending severity of peak car.
Full profile interview
10 Dec 2019

Xarvio, a BASF Digital Farming brand
Xarvio is a software platform for digital agriculture owned by global chemicals company BASF. Xarvio tools help improve decision making on farms by letting users monitor and manage their fields, as well as identify weeds and pests during field inspections. In December 2019, IDTechEx Analyst spoke with Louis Wells, Solutions and Services manager at BASF, about the Xarvio platform.
15 Jul 2019

Future of Heavy Duty EV Motors Off Road
Fork lift trucks are almost all induction because reliability and affordability trump performance here. Their batteries are rapidly going lithium-ion for something less toxic and nearer to fit-and-forget but there is no similar issue with the motors.
16 Aug 2018

Monsanto case reaffirms that robotics is the future of agrochemicals
Last week a US court held Monsanto's glyphosate responsible for causing cancer in a ground keeper, awarding $289M of damages. You might wonder what the link between this verdict and agricultural robotics is? The answer is everything.