New John Deere AutoTrac™ products available for 2017 provide a new line of vision when making postemergence sprayer applications.
AutoTrac Vision uses a front-mounted camera to see early-season corn, soybeans and cotton at least 4 to 6 inches high. An industry exclusive from John Deere.. “The camera actually sees the row and steers the sprayer down the row in early season application,” explained product manager Sara Flohr at the recent John Deere Product Reveal.
Flohr says Vision can be used all the way until canopy, at which point a grower can switch to AutoTrac RowSense™ “which are two paddles mounted to the front tires of the sprayer that feel their way down the row,” said Flohr. It uses a row sensor similar to that used on combines to detect crop rows and steer the sprayer to the center of the row for later season post applications. “Both systems allow the operator to spray at faster speeds with little manual steering and cover more acres per day with less damage to crops.”
Both systems are available as field installed kits on currently operating machines or from the factory on new John Deere R4023, R4030, R4038 and R4045 Sprayers.
Learn more in this interview with Sara: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/deere-flohr.mp3″ text=”Interview with Sara Flohr, John Deere”]