USA TODAY: Tractors Better, Smarter, Faster, Greener

Jun 11, 2014

Driving Toward the Future

Manufacturers work to create better, smarter, faster, greener tractors

USA TODAY By Samantha Goldberg

COULD THERE COME a day when a tractor works a field without a human driver? The idea is not as futuristic as you might think. Kinze Manufacturing Inc., which builds agricultural equipment, has been testing new, autonomous row-crop technology that allows a driverless tractor to pull a grain cart. While not yet commercially available, farmers have been providing “positive” feedback and changes are being made as needed, the company said. While the Kinze Autonomy Project is still in development, its technology is a hint of what is in store for future tractors. The new technology might be expensive, but it might also be necessary. “For each new feature, there’s a new cost because years of development go into them,” said Dan Danford, a spokesman for Racine, Wis.-based Case IH, the second-largest agricultural equipment manufacturer in North America. “For precision farming, while it does increase the cost of the tractor, it is seen as less of an option than as a requirement for today.”

FUEL-EFFICIENT ENGINES

There’s a big push to make fuel-efficient tractors that cover more ground while burning less fuel, said Ryan Schaefer, a marketing manager for Case IH. “In the next five to 10 years, you’ll see machines launched that answer those tangible needs of the American farmer,” he predicted. Tractor manufacturers are also moving to higher horsepower machines using smaller, more fuel-efficient engines.

Calculating mpg on tractors is trickier than it used to be. Tractors are no longer evaluated for fuel efficiency solely on the amount of fuel they consume, but also on how they use a special fluid required to get emissions down to new EPA standards, said Danford. The way a farmer uses a tractor also affects fuel efficiency.

“Depending on the operation, a tractor might just be out planting a couple times a year, but there are some operations that run 24-hour-straight days in a row,” he said.

RUBBER TRACKS

Using rubber tracks — seen on the Case IH Steiger 600 Quadtrac, above — instead of tires helps spread the load of a heavy, high-horsepower machine over more surface area, said Schaefer. “(Farmers) want to be able to reduce and limit compaction and manage the effects they have on the soil,” he added. Tracks reduce the amount of damage done to the soil, and that makes more air, water and nutrients available to growing plants.

AUTOMATIC GEAR SHIFTING

Case IH’s Diesel Saver Automatic Productivity Management (APM) system automatically adjusts both the gear setting and engine speed of the tractor based on the condition of the field as another way to save fuel. It’s already standard on Case IH’s Efficient Power line of tractors, including the Steiger, Magnum and Puma series, and improves fuel efficiency by as much as 25 percent, the company said.

“The previous days of actually shifting up or down are disappearing. We’re letting tractors do that so we can maximize every drop of fuel,” said Leo Bose, a training manager at Case IH. Dennis Buckmaster, a professor in agricultural and biological engineering at Purdue University, said this advanced feature will become increasingly common in future tractor models.

BACK-UP CAMERAS

One safety-related feature that will appear “in the near term” is a back-up camera, said Buckmaster, the Purdue University professor. “We’re going to see them on agriculture equipment to allow (farmers) to see what they can’t see when sitting in the seat.” The larger viewing area will make it easier to spot bystanders, hitch equipment together and make tight turns, he said. Back-up cameras have already been mandated by the National Highway Safety Transportation Administration for any vehicle less than 10,000 pounds made after May 1, 2018. Buckmaster said camera monitors in tractor cabs also are likely in the near future.

PRE-PROGRAMMED TRACTORS

Manufacturers of autonomous tractors will also need technology to let farmers pre-program paths set by a computer or phone, Buckmaster said. It would be similar to that used in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, which are controlled either autonomously by onboard computers or by a pilot on the ground using remote control. While Buckmaster said it would be more complicated to have this technology in a tractor, “if we can do that with a UAV, then we can do that with a tractor.”

‘FOLLOW-ME’ TECHNOLOGY

New tractors also will likely incorporate technology similar to Case IH’s vehicle-to-vehicle control system (V2V), which uses Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to let one driver sync data exchange, travel speed and steering of two vehicles at once, the company said. Buckmaster said that with this technology already developed, a more advanced “leader-follower system,” where one manned tractor has one or more tractors following it, is probably not far off. He said the system would need to include safety technology resembling the new automatic braking system some cars have that kicks in without driver input if the car gets too close to a vehicle in front of it.

OLDER TRACTORS

Some farmers may hope that they can keep their original tractors and just upgrade the features to save money (tractors can cost from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands of dollars), but that might not be possible. “Depends on the technology,” said Case IH spokesman Danford. “(Rubber) tracks can be added later by paying a third party, but it’s a lot of money to retrofit and typically not cost effective. You would spend much more money on that retrofit than if you just buy something that’s engineered to work like that.”