Grant Warden, senior mechatronics engineer with Blue River Technology, a John Deere subsidiary, shows how its autonomous technology works on the Deere 460 articulated dump truck.
The 460 ADT is Deere’s first attempt at fielding an autonomous piece of construction equipment, and the company chose to focus on the enclosed environment of quarries. The machines are often operated by the least experienced operator in a quarry, according to Deere officials. Eliminating the need for an ADT operator enables a quarry operation to deploy its experienced operators on excavators and loaders, for example.
Quarry productivity hinges on keeping rocks moving from the source site to the crusher. ADTs traverse the route from the stationary excavator or loader to the stationary crusher. Any problems along the route affect productivity.
The critical need for reliability in the numerous ADTs involved in a quarry operation moved Deere to choose this machine for autonomy.
How does the autonomous Deere ADT work?
Autonomous ADT operation begins with the technology and software, what Deere calls its “tech stack,” that the company has developed and deployed on its ag equipment, according to Maya Sripadam, senior product manager, autonomy for Blue River. These on-board components—perception, navigation, vehicle controls—are paired with Deere’s Operation Center, formally called JDLink.
The system uses the company’s Starfire Guidance and StarLink for data transmission, giving it a complete control system, said Kristen Camden, ADT specialist.
“We are removing the operator,” she said, “so anything having to do with steering, velocity control, or dump actions is upgraded with the right functionally hardware. Hardware is ruggedized.”
The site manager uploads a map of the quarry site into the Operation Center “that define[s] the route of the truck along with the load and dump points,” said Sripadam. “[The manager] creates a ‘mission’: For example, go from load point A to load zone B and follow this road.”
Autonomous operation is then launched through Operations Center.
Deere officials emphasized that the ADT is a development machine and would not identify a release date for the retrofit hardware. It said it is currently testing autonomous 460 P Tier ADTs in several quarries. It said retrofits would be done by Deere dealers.
“Our autonomy strategy relies on partnering with our John Deere dealers to make sure that we’re working with customers to identify the right equipment and solution for their application,” said Kasey Kelly, ADT specialist. “It also allows us to make sure that we can build a truck out of our factory that is autonomy ready so we can retrofit the kit onto any truck.”
