Earlier this week, US regulators issued the final rules that removed the requirement on  autonomous vehicles makers that mandated the companies to equip self driving cars with manual driving controls.

For those unaware, the autonomous vehicles sold in the US were required to feature human driving controls to meet the crash standards. Hence, automobile manufacturers and even tech companies faced challenges in developing automated driving systems (ADS) without any manual driving controls (Via Gadgets360). These standards were set decades ago, but have now been removed in America. Just last month, automobile giant General Motors and its self driving unit Cruise petitioned the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to build and deploy a fully autonomous vehicle that do not feature steering wheels or brake pedals.

Notably, the revision in the rules also assume that cars “will always have a driver’s seat, a steering wheel and accompanying steering column, or just one front outboard passenger seating position.” But the regulators added that “For vehicles designed to be solely operated by an ADS, manually operated driving controls are logically unnecessary.” These new rules were first proposed back in March 2020 and have finally been adopted.

NHTSA Deputy Administrator Steven Cliff stated that “As the driver changes from a person to a machine in ADS-equipped vehicles, the need to keep the humans safe remains the same and must be integrated from the beginning.” Although, the NHTSA added that children should not occupy seats that are typically reserved for “drivers.” So now, we can expect to see more autonomous cars that do not require any human interaction from their passengers.

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The autonomous vehicle transformation is fast catching up with the agricultural sector with the announcement by John Deere of an autonomous tractor. Agricultural automation has been improving gradually over the years and this is certainly a milestone in the sector.
Agricultural equipment maker John Deere says the fully autonomous tractor combines machine learning with the company’s GPS-powered auto-steer features in its operation. The tractor allows the farmer to remotely monitor the equipment while also engaged in other activities. This means the farmer can take his hands off the wheel of the tractor, leave the cab completely or be elsewhere and still have the tractor do his bidding using his smartphone.

John Deere has reiterated that the autonomous tractor is not a demo and production will commence this fall. The company says it is not a concept machine and had been under development for several years.

John Deere has been at the heart of the silent transformation in agricultural automation, with several tailor-made solutions to different aspects of the agricultural ecosystem. Auto-steer systems which use GPS to locate and guide tractors are at the heart of farm automation. Farmers first map the boundaries of their fields either with beacons or a drive around the perimeter. Thereafter a dedicated software plots a route which can then be finetuned by the driver if necessary. Indeed, John Deere says its AutoTrac solution has been evolving for 20 years and the new move builds on these solutions.

The autonomy kit includes six pairs of stereo cameras to get a full view around the tractor, and this combines with machine vision algorithms for a seamless movement and navigation of obstacles by the tractor. The tractor could work for 8 hours on a full tank, and there are humans in the loop, the teleoperators — a call center of third-party contractors.
When the actual models come into circulation, that’s when a full evaluation of the new autonomous tractor could be done. For now, we await the release of the equipment to tie some loose ends like pricing and full specs.

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(source)

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