7 Layers: John Deere Talks RFP, Data, and Securing Autonomous Ag

SDxCentral Reporter Emma Chervek is joined by John Deere's Director of Emerging Technology Julian Sanchez for a conversation at the agricultural giant's test farm outside of Des Moines, Iowa. The two discuss John Deere's request for proposal for the satellite industry to connect and automate the operations of 1.5 million agricultural machines by 2026. The agricultural giant is searching for a vendor or set of vendors to develop a SATCOM solution to provide connectivity in areas not covered by terrestrial cellular networks. "It's critical to be able to monitor what's going on with the machine at any given point from anywhere," Sanchez said. Satellite connectivity requires a lot of different players. "There are folks that are focused more on how they offer the ground solutions – the ground technology to receive the satellite signals. There [are] folks that are interested in optimizing the way in which data gets moved between ground technology and the satellite technology. There's folks that are worried about the design of the satellites and how they architect constellations. And so we we've got them all here," Sanchez explained, referring to the industry day focused on this RFP happening in a building across the farm. Sanchez also discussed the role of data and analytics in Deere's autonomous ag ambitions. "One of the things that you have to have to continue to deploy reliable autonomous solutions is ... more and more data about what the machines actually see out there in the field so that the algorithms get more intelligent over time," he said. From an autonomy standpoint, connectivity is crucial because it "unlocks the ability for farmers to have confidence" in the machine's competency compared to the confidence farmers have in their own abilities. And "in the continued evolution of autonomous solutions, [connectivity] gives us the ability to collect more data, bring that data back, and use that data to train the algorithms," he added. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices