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As quickly as I hit play, the shed doorways bearing the phrases “John Deere” open to disclose a vibrant inexperienced tractor. As it rolls towards me, the tractor shortly swerves to disclose what it is towing: a big planter with inexperienced arms and yellow buckets. (These are referred to as row markers and seed packing containers, respectively, my lifelong farmer father and eight-year-old, farmers-in-training nephews inform me). Soon the markers broaden, displaying me simply how huge the machine actually is.
The video is a glimpse right into a digital actuality demo the storied farm gear maker is planning for CES 2021, which begins subsequent month. John Deere plans to ship VR headsets to reporters, with the objective of just about transporting them to a farm to see the corporate’s merchandise at work throughout planting season. Offering one thing visible for media is key for translating simply how large Deere’s merchandise are — and educating individuals who aren’t conversant in agriculture.
“We want to take you from where you’re at and feel like you’re someplace totally different,” Jon Ebert, supervisor of John Deere’s public and business relations workforce for North America, says in an interview.
John Deere will distribute Facebook’s $299 Oculus Quest 2 goggles, which function with no wired connection to a pc. Designing the VR expertise, sending the units to customers and different related prices had been lower than exhibiting on the Las Vegas Convention Center, Ebert stated. John Deere’s funds for CES in 2021 is about 75% of its regular CES expense.
CES is one of many greatest tech exhibits of the 12 months and attracts hundreds of individuals from across the globe to Las Vegas, the place they’ll see the most recent improvements in tech. Last 12 months’s occasion attracted 170,000 attendees and 4,400 exhibitors throughout greater than 2.9 million sq. toes of exhibit house in 11 official venues.
The coronavirus pandemic has pressured CES to go all digital this 12 months. The convention will happen from Jan. 11 to 14, and expectations for the quantity of stories generated by the occasion have been scaled again in comparison with earlier years. CES 2021 is unlikely to look something just like the gatherings held in earlier years.
CES 2021 is the newest instance of a hurdle that Deere and others within the tech business face in terms of occasions: Making folks really feel like they’re experiencing merchandise in particular person. Interviews and briefings may be dealt with by video conferences, however demo rooms merely do not translate to Zoom. For large conferences like CES, the conference middle flooring is a key a part of the present. Attendees can stroll from sales space to sales space, seeing the newest in tech and discovering hidden gems among the many a whole lot of exhibitors. Without the serendipity that freedom-to-roam affords, smaller corporations will discover it exhausting to get observed. And even large corporations might uncover it is tough to show what merchandise are like if they cannot be seen in particular person.
Companies are experimenting with virtual reality to fill the gap. At this year’s IFA — Europe’s biggest trade show held each summer in Berlin — Samsung and LG created virtual demo rooms. Samsung used Epic’s Unreal Engine for games to build a virtual, 3D tour experience, a choose-your-own adventure digital demo. LG launched a virtual exhibition that demonstrated its latest product lineups within a realistic rendering of Berlin Messe’s Hall 18, its usual IFA home.
While participants generally liked the virtual rooms, the companies haven’t said if they’ll do something similar for CES.
“There will be interactive mechanisms to ask questions, schedule meetings, these kinds of things,” says Steve Koenig, vice president of research for the Consumer Technology Association, the organization hosts CES. “At its heart, that’s what CES is really about, bringing industry together for conversations and leading to business or news stories or whatever it is.”
John Deere’s tech push
John Deere is relatively new to CES. The farming equipment company exhibited for the first time in 2019, an effort to introduce itself to a new crop of potential customers and media. While the company is best known for its big green tractors, it has also built operations in artificial intelligence and even purchased 5G airwaves to install next-generational cellular technology in its Iowa and Illinois factories.
Deere’s technology push is all about precision agriculture. Farmers want to find out — nearly down to the individual plant — what’s happening with their crops during the planting process, the application of fertilizer and harvest. They want to know if a certain seed performs better than others or why a part of the field ended up with poor yields. Precision agriculture uses mapping satellites and other technology to let farmers know what’s going on in the soil, letting them be more efficient with gas, fertilizer and seeds.
In the Midwest and other crop growing regions of the US, self-driving tractors are commonplace. (The farmer still sits behind the wheel.) Sensors can detect what the machine’s doing, what the crop conditions are and everything in between. Farmers can monitor the progress of planting and harvesting from their iPads, and tractors serve as their own mobile hotspots. It’s a specialized reflection of our own increasingly connected world, except farmers have used many of those technologies, like auto-steering and GPS mapping, since the ’90s.
Deere wants people beyond farmers to know about the advances in agricultural technology. But don’t expect the announcement of a new tractor or AI system at CES. The presentation will be more about education than newly released products.
“We’re using CES to make sure that we’re generating awareness of the technology that John Deere is envisioning to take this immense variability for farmers [and] make it extra predictable,” Ebert says.
At its first CES, the corporate targeted on harvest. It displayed a mix, which collects corn and different crops from the sphere. Last 12 months, it featured a sprayer, which applies chemical compounds to fields.
This 12 months’s focus is planting. “As we go through the VR experience, it will … show how technology is important in this step because this step helps make … the next job smarter,” Ebert says.
Down to the seed stage
Viewing one thing in VR is not fairly like experiencing it in particular person. But digital actuality has a giant profit over the true world: it might probably take you to locations you may’t enter in actuality. For John Deere, that is farm soil.
The firm’s VR system will present the “journey of the seed,” Ebert says. While the tractor and planter weigh “upwards of 40,000 pounds,” they trigger little disruption to the soil when planting seeds. Deere VR customers will get to see that.
“You’re never going to be in a soil pit … watching a planter go over the top of you,” he says. “But as we think about trying to highlight the different complex processes that are happening and the technologies that go into planting the seeds, this allows us to have a vantage point to see all of that come together.”
Users will not be driving round digital tractors, taking part in video games or going on any kind of choose-your-own-adventure with Deere’s programs, a minimum of not in VR. Instead, the demonstration will characteristic guided hotspots contained in the software program that customers navigate to to study Deere applied sciences. The firm may have an interactive planting recreation on its web site.
“2020 has thrown curveballs … for everyone, and this has been an opportunity for us to take a look at how we can do things more unique,” Ebert says.
After the planter booms broaden, I’m shortly transported to what seems to be a gap within the floor. As I search for, a tractor speeds towards me, driving over me earlier than I can react. Turns out I’m not a farmer on this a part of Deere’s demo. I’m among the many seeds, watching the planter and its companion related expertise do its job. And I’m actually on my sofa.
(This story has not been edited by Newslivenation workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)