On Thursday, the company announced it's acquired Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million.
Aaryan Balu reports the California startup develops autonomous technology for farm equipment.
Dan Leibfried, Director of Automation and Autonomy at the Deere Intelligent Solutions Group in Urbandale, says Bear Flag is four years old and has been testing its technology on a variety of crops.
"Crops like orchards in the early days to working in speciality crops and growing vegetables, including lettuce and greens and tomatoes, to crops like cotton, wheat, and other crops that are grown in the western California area."
Bear Flag's products combine radar, lidar, and cameras connected to the cloud, allowing farmers to remotely manage the tractor.
"It's the combination of multiple sensors that ultimately gives the machine itself situational awareness similar to what a human would be doing in the machine to free up that available labor to focus on other aspects of the farm operation at the same time."
The Bear Flag deal comes four years after Deere bought Blue River Technology, another robotics company. Farmers can now buy Deere sprayers that use artificial intelligence to apply pesticides and fertilizer. It's called "See and Spray."
I'm Aaryan Balu.