John Deere adds camera guidance system to its precision farming suite

The company says the camera will detect the tramline or plant row and steer the machine along it, keeping the vehicle wheels in the centre between rows to reduce crop damage and help increase yields. In situations where it cannot detect a row, the system will fall back to an auto-generated guidance line.

Mr Howard says the combined use of camera and GPS technology should allow operators to work faster, with less stress and at speeds of up to 30kph. He says it can also be used to guide implements, such as inter-row weeders.

The fusion of a camera image and automatically generated A-B line ensures that even in spots where the camera is unable to detect distinctive crop rows, the system will still guide the machine says the company. It says when working with a slurry tanker in early season maize, the plants need to be 10cm high for the system to differentiate between crop and soil. The company also says the system will work at night.

Currently the camera guidance system can be retrofitted to the manufacturer’s 6M, 6R, 7R and 8R/8RT Series tractors plus its R Series self-propelled sprayers.

Prices vary depending on the machine the system is being fitted to, but as a guide, the camera and installation kit retails at around £4,000 on the basis that the customer already has a Gen4 version 2 GreenStar display with Premium activation, or a 2630 display with AutoTrac & RowSense activations.