Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — For years Americans have been told autonomous technology was improving and that driverless vehicles were just around the corner.

Finally they’re here, but to catch a glimpse of them, you'll need to go to a farm rather than look along city streets.

Beginning this fall, green 14-ton tractors that can plow day or night with no one sitting in the cab, or even watching nearby, will come off the John Deere factory assembly line in Waterloo, Iowa, harkening the age of autonomous farming.

The development follows more than a decade-long effort by the world’s largest farm equipment manufacturer, and marks a milestone for automation advocates, who for years have been explaining why driverless cars aren’t quite ready for prime time.

“I’m glad to see they’re coming out and will stimulate the other technologies,” said Raj Rajkumar, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert in autonomous cars.

Deere isn’t saying yet how much the autonomous tractors will cost but the new technology will be added onto tractors that sell for about $500,000, said Ben Haber, a company spokesman. The company plans to operate the autonomous tractors on 10 to 50 farms by this fall before significantly increasing the number in following years.

For the past decade, the supposedly imminent debut of autonomous vehicles on city streets and freeways has been repeatedly pushed off as companies struggled to guarantee their safety.

But, Rajkumar notes, tractors have it easier because they don’t need to contend with other vehicles, pedestrians or the complexities of an urban scene. Tractors can make use of consistent GPS data, unlike cars that can lose contact traveling through tunnels or amid tall buildings.

Or as Joel Dawson, a Deere production director, put it, “You aren’t...