LAS VEGAS (DTN) -- Kubota on Monday announced at the CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) the commercialization of an autonomous solution built into its 105.7 horsepower diesel Kubota M5 Narrow tractor platform. Early applications include work in vineyards, orchards and mowing.

Kubota also introduced a concept versatile platform "transformer" robot (KVPR) that expands, contracts and moves along every axis, in essence, Kubota said, to perform a wide variety of tasks with various mounted tools such as scoops and forks. The KVPR connects and disconnects from its tool set autonomously.

"Physical AI is a key inflection point for our industry and for Kubota," said Brett McMickell, chief technology officer for Kubota North America. "Decision-making, obstacle detection and voice recognition capabilities mean AI real-time insights will now inform tasking, labor assignments, and efficiency improvements."

Leading luxury wine supplier Treasury Wine Estates is already leveraging Kubota's solutions in the field and joined Kubota at CES to share its experiences with autonomy.

"We put Kubota's M5 Narrow tractor to work during mowing and under-vine cultivation," said Marc Di Pietra, regional service maintenance manager for Treasury Wine Estates. "It handles routine passes with autonomy and sensing across every row and block, which reduces rework, increases efficiency, and gives our team more time to focus on what matters most."

DTN/Progressive Farmer spoke with Di Pietra about Treasury Wine Estates' work with Kubota. Treasury Wine Estates has been working with autonomy for several years, operating four units from Kubota this year in the North Napa Valley.

The following Q&A has been edited for clarity.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: Tell us about the role of autonomy on Treasury Wine Estates.

Di Pietra: We're using it mostly under vines. Mowing and under-vine cultivation. We're moving fruit bins during harvest. We've been spraying autonomously.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: What's been your impression of the work?

Di Pietra: There are challenges we still need to figure out. These vineyards and orchards were not built necessarily with automation or autonomy in mind, such as headland spacing, row spacing and obstacles. Thirty years ago, when you're building the vineyard, you may have put all the rocks under the vine. Now, that's going to limit your ability to do under-vine cultivation. Or ruts. A manual tractor can easily manipulate that. But it's a bit more complicated with autonomy. Trying to make three-point turns is still a challenge. But that's getting worked on and should be solved this year.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: It's being said that autonomy is at least one solution for labor shortages. Would you agree?

Di Pietra: It helps. But the labor problem is much bigger than autonomy. We can't find enough people. That's always the challenge. Always will be. But we still have to manage everything we grow. I think autonomy is one step that will allow us to do that, and do it with more precision, accuracy and intelligence.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: But one good operator can manage several machines, correct?

Di Pietra: Yes. One operator can easily manage three machines. But safety is important, so keeping your eye on the field is always important, especially when we're doing something new like this. So, in addition to blocking off the field with markers, we keep an operator who is within like visual sight line of the machine. That could be as far away as a quarter mile, maybe a half a mile at one of our ranches with perfectly straight rows. But you can also visually monitor them like on the iPad or tablet or a computer, as well as visually see what's happening. (With this), you get a lot more information on the clock quicker. You can say, "Hey, I'm under-spraying this last acre, or I'm over-spraying this last acre," and you can make adjustments live instead of waiting 'til you've burned through 400 gallons to realize you sprayed too much or too little.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: How do you measure improved efficiency?

Di Pietra: There are growing pains, just like there are with anything. It's new technology. But that said, every year we're definitely seeing that grow. We've increased our autonomous spraying coverage by five times over the last two years, which was huge.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: What do you still need that autonomy hasn't brought?

Di Pietra: Now I need that data. So, not only what the operator can use, but data the vineyard manager can use. How do we leverage finance with this data? How do we build financial plans to be more accurate and more concise? How do I understand what's happening in the field? How do all the pieces of these puzzles start fitting together so we can do more in less time, a lot easier? That's the nut we're trying to crack.

Dan Miller can be reached at dan.miller@dtn.com

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