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.

At its US launch, the company said the autonomous tractor serves a specific purpose: feeding the world. The global population is expected to grow from about eight billion to nearly 10 billion people by 2050, increasing the global food demand by 50 per cent.

Furthermore, farmers must feed this growing population with less available land and skilled labour, and work through the variables inherent in farming like changing weather conditions and climate, variations in soil quality, and the presence of weeds and pests.

It's not yet known when it will be available in the UK.

The autonomous tractor has six pairs of stereo cameras, which enables 360-degree obstacle detection and the calculation of distance.

Images captured by the cameras are passed through a deep neural network that classifies each pixel in approximately 100 milliseconds and determines if the machine continues to move or stops, depending on if an obstacle is detected. The autonomous tractor is also continuously checking its position relative to a geofence, ensuring it is operating where it is supposed to, and is accurate to within less than one inch.

Using John Deere Operations Center Mobile app, farmers can swipe from left to right to start the machine. While the machine is working, the farmer can leave the field to focus on other tasks while monitoring the machine’s status from their mobile device.

The app provides access to live video, images, data, and metrics, and allows a farmer to adjust speed, depth, and more. In the event of any job-quality anomalies or machine-health issues, farmers will be notified remotely and can make adjustments to optimize the performance of the machine.