At CES 2025 today, John Deere revealed four new autonomous machines to support customers in agriculture, construction, and commercial landscaping. Building on Deere’s autonomous technology revealed at CES 2022, the company’s second-generation autonomy kit combines advanced computer vision and AI (artificial intelligence) to help the machines navigate their environments.

A common challenge in the three industries is a lack of skilled labor availability. In agriculture, the company says that the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually. In construction, PRT Staffing says that 88% of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. In commercial landscaping, LMN claims that 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions.

“Our agriculture, construction, and commercial landscaping customers all have work that must get done at certain times of the day and year, yet there is not enough available and skilled labor to do the work,” said Jahmy Hindman, Chief Technology Officer at John Deere. “Autonomy can help address this challenge. That’s why we’re extending our technology stack to enable more machines to operate safely and autonomously in unique and complex environments. This will not only benefit our customers, but all of us who rely on them to provide the food, fuel, fiber, infrastructure, and landscaping care that we depend on every day.”

The company is quickly expanding autonomous technology to more machines. Select new machines will be autonomy-ready with retrofit kits available for certain existing machines, providing customers with multiple paths to adoption based on where they are in their technology journey.

The 460 P-Tier autonomous ADT (articulated dump truck) addresses challenges for quarry operations. Quarries supply the essential raw materials vital for building roads, buildings, and infrastructure, and it’s a complex process to mine, process, and transport materials. Using the second-generation kit, the ADT will handle the repetitive tasks of transporting material around the quarry to facilitate different steps in the cycle.

The autonomous 9RX tractor for large-scale agriculture addresses the specific needs for tillage, one of the busiest times of the year for farmers. With the second-generation autonomy kit featuring 16 individual cameras arranged in pods to enable a 360-degree view of the field, farmers can step away from the machine and focus their time on other important jobs. The advanced autonomy kit also calculates depth more accurately at larger distances, allowing the tractor to pull more equipment and drive faster.

Protecting crops through air blast spraying is a challenging and repetitive job, and that is where the autonomous 5ML orchard tractor comes in. Featuring the latest autonomy kit with added lidar sensors to address the dense canopies found in orchards, the initial machine will be offered with a diesel engine. A battery-electric tractor of comparable size and capacity to existing diesel 5M/ML models on the market today will follow.

The autonomous battery electric mower is intended to help customers in commercial landscaping, a highly competitive industry in need of staffing in support of bidding. The mower leverages the same camera technology as other Deere autonomous machines, but on a reduced scale since the machine has a smaller footprint. With cameras on the front, left, right, and rear, 360-degree coverage is achieved, the autonomy enabling staff to focus on other aspects of the job—like bidding.

The machines are managed via John Deere Operations Center Mobile, the company’s cloud-based platform. By swiping left to right using an app, the machine can be started once placed in the appropriate spot. Through the app, users also have access to live video, images, data, and metrics, and the ability to adjust various factors like speed. In the event of any job quality anomalies or machine health issues, users will be notified remotely so they can make necessary adjustments.

The fully autonomous machines will be on display at John Deere’s CES booth in the West Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center.