Dr. Scott Shearer Shares Thoughts On Autonomy And Ag Equipment Development

In a blog post last year, I talked about Kinze's autonomy project and shared the company's view that as autonomy technology moves toward commercialization, we would see equipment get smaller in a way that takes full advantage of an autonomous fleet of vehicles.

This may be some years away, but the influence of autonomous (unmanned and remotely monitored) equipment technology development is already having an impact on future equipment design. And there are other factors as play as well that may mean that we've reached the apex of equipment size, and that we may soon be seeing equipment size begin to come down.

I got a chance to chat with Dr. Scott Shearer, who recently came on board to chair the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering at The Ohio State University about this subject. He shared some of the key factors affecting equipment development, including autonomy, and described some of the autonomous fleet research he hopes will gain traction at the university.

One point in our discussion I felt was particularly compelling is the discussion about the impact of compaction from large machinery use. Scott did not get into it here, but he has some very compelling information on the yield effect of compaction which make the case that autonomy could provide significant payback to the user on this point alone. If you'd like more information on this or other issues Scott shares here, feel free to use the comment box below.