Talk:Driverless tractor

Please don't delete this page! It is for a class project and will be further filled out and worked on. However, help editing or adding information is always welcome! Thanks! --Eems.p (talk) 23:54, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Picture

The picture at the top of this article is not in any way of a driverless tractor, and is quite misleading. It would be better removed if a suitable one cannot be found. 217.39.59.168 (talk) 18:54, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Critiques

You need to include some pictures of the driverless tractor. --Youngpenn (talk) 15:48, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

If you're having a hard time finding images, you might be able to get photos from John Deere. You could try contacting their media relations people (link here) to get photos and permission to use them on Wikipedia.--Brodmont (talk) 15:53, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Or better yet might be to send an email to Autonomous Tractor Corp -- see http://www.autonomoustractor.com/index.html . They actually seem to have a product, at least in prototype form. --Brodmont (talk) 01:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

In your notes section number 7 lacks a proper citation. I do not recall the proper form for a website like that one but you should reference the Template:Citation page. --Youngpenn (talk) 16:06, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

You might consider renaming the "current manufacturers" section as the first sentence is that there are currently no manufacturers. Maybe something about John Deere and that company's role in the creation of the driverless tractor? Kslinker5493 (talk) 17:07, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The safety section could use a bit more information. Have there been any incidents? What kind of safety testing has been done? Any statistics relating to safety?--MartellRedViper (talk) 14:57, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

The technology section should be expanded upon a little since this was a breakthrough in technology because it is a driverless tractor. --SJRick (talk) 15:18, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

History Section

The phrase "In the years proceeding" is probably correct technically, but it might be better to use language like "in subsequent years" or "as time went on" or "later" -- just to be a little clearer about your meaning.--Brodmont (talk) 16:00, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Per instructions from Prof McGrady, I cleaned up the language in this section a bit. --Brodmont (talk) 00:58, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Consider adding who or what company first came up with the idea for a driverless tractor and who first implemented it. You state that "several companies" began creating them in 2011 and 2012, but you don't list any of these companies (or possibly what motivated them to create these prototypes, where they plan to use them, etc.). The history section is good, but I think it needs more concrete details. Kslinker5493 (talk) 16:58, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Technology Section

Consider rewording the first sentence to something like "a move toward farming based heavily on automation," just to make it clearer.--Brodmont (talk) 16:07, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Based on comments from Prof McGrady, I cleaned up the language here myself.--Brodmont (talk) 00:57, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Like the history section, I think there need to be a few more concrete details. Maybe who first designed the new technology, if it was modeled after old technology, more about what the controllers do, etc. We get the gist from what is written so far, but I think the article would benefit from more details to add to its credibility. Also, the statement about "making some people nervous" might need to be reworded. See http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:WEASEL#Unsupported_attributions about rules dealing with opinions of sources. Kslinker5493 (talk) 17:05, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

That statement, "A tractor operating without a driver makes some people nervous," probably ought to be eliminated -- see the "clarity" section of the WP MOS in the section about "Weasel Words" -- "phrases that are evasive, ambiguous, or misleading... evasive, ambiguous or misleading attribution." The reader would wonder, who are those people and what are they nervous about? You could improve this section by going to the reference you cite and writing a clearer statement about what the safety concerns are and who is concerned about them.--Brodmont (talk) 01:22, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Development Section

In this section, you have a link to an article about Autonomous Tractor Corp. but there is no WP article on this topic. Unless you mean to create such an article, you should unlink that text. One option would be to link to the company web site at http://www.autonomoustractor.com/index.html . --Brodmont (talk) 01:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Driverless tractor/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Dana boomer (talk · contribs) 13:25, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi everyone! I'll be completing the GA review for this article. I know you're part of a class, which is ending shortly, so I will attempt to get the review up quickly - hopefully by the end of the day. More soon. Dana boomer (talk) 13:25, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Initial comments:

• There are several places that need additional referencing:
  • First two paragraphs of History section
  • Majority of How the technology works section, beginning at "Instead of drivers,..."
  • First paragraph of Autonomous Tractor Corporation section
  • All of The SPIRIT section
• While there is relatively good coverage of driverless tractors today, the history of driverless tractors is severely lacking.
  • A quick Google Books search shows that Popular Mechanics was talking about driverless tractors as early as the 1940s. While the technology was obviously not as advanced as it is now, they were part of the evolution of this idea. Other Google Books results show discussions in other magazines and books steadily from the 1940s to now. The evolution of this technology is just as important as the current prototypes, but is currently given only a small amount of page time.
    • While better, there is still expansion that could be done on this. This article is about driverless tractors as a whole, not "current driverless tractors" How does the technology used in early versions differ from that used today? How did the technology evolve? There's a huge jump from wire in a field to picture technology - how did this happen? The sources I mention below, which look like they may help to provide a useful bridge between these two extremes, do not seem to have been used. Dana boomer (talk) 02:48, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
  • A Google Scholar search turns up additional material. See, for example:
    • An ultrasonic guidance system for driverless tractors, Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research, 1972, cited in many other journal articles
    • Automatic guidance sensors for agricultural field machines: A review, Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research, 1991
    • Developing the driverless tractor, Agricultural Engineering, 1971
    • Development of a Deterministic Autonomous Tractor, Proceedings of the CIGR International Conference, 2004
• What about driverless tractors in other countries? Has there been any work on them in Europe, Russia, China, South America, Australia?

• Again, this is about driverless tractors as a whole, not "driverless tractors in the US". At least one of the above sources shows that driverless tractors were being discussed at international conferences almost a decade ago, and I would be amazed if Americans were the only ones interested in this technology, given the great swaths of agricultural space in, say, Russia and China. Dana boomer (talk) 02:48, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

• The image licensing is unacceptable. The sourcing on neither of the images gives proof that these were released under a CC 3.0 license. Is there a website that these were sourced from that has the license listed? Or was an e-mail (OTRS ticket) sent from ATC to Wikipedia?
• John Deere section, "In spring of 2008" - don't use seasons, as the meaning of them changes depending on hemisphere. Instead use a month or general time frame - "March 2008" or "early 2008".
• John Deere section, ITEC is a disambiguation link

Overall, you have made a good start on this topic. Before it is of GA status, however, there is some work that needs to be done on referencing, coverage and images, as well as some more minor tweaks needed here and there. I'll keep an eye on this page - please let me know if you have any questions! Dana boomer (talk) 14:11, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi again, and thanks for the note on my talk page. While I understand that you are working on a deadline, and were at a disadvantage due to not having a review until late in the process, a good bit of the material/suggestions I made above have not been integrated. I have struck the ones that have, and have added a few additional comments. Dana boomer (talk) 02:48, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't have access to any of the three links you listed from Google Scholar. They cost $30+--Mdcoope3 (talk) 03:15, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Pardon? The last one, at least, is linked directly to the full-text version. Also, check out alternative sources, like:

• [http://age-web.age.uiuc.edu/faculty/qzhang/Publications/2000CEA25%281%29Reid.pdf Agricultural automatic guidance research in

North America] (link to full text)

• Many of the sources in this Google Scholar search and similar wording - they have a quite nice feature along the right hand side that tells you if there is a PDF of the full-text available online. You don't have to specifically use the sources I mentioned, just do a bit of digging on your own to find additional information on the points above - there is a major gap between control by wires in a field and control by autonomous picture recognition, and the article is completely US focused. Dana boomer (talk) 04:05, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Query

There appear to have been a series of edits throughout the day on May 8, but there haven't been any additional edits since either to the article itself, or by the people who were involved in editing the article in the first place. As it has been three weeks without any action, and since the semester is likely over, I think it's time to do a final assessment of the article and close the review, pass or fail. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:55, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi BlueMoonset - Yes, I was hoping that the students were planning to do more work on the article in response to my comments above, but that doesn't appear to be happening. I'm in the process of re-reading the article and will post a final assessment shortly. Dana boomer (talk) 17:08, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Great! Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:35, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Final review

• History - who is Frank Andrew? Inventor? Farmer? Notable enough for his own article (if so, he should be wikilinked, even if it's a red link).
• History, "There were no major advances in driverless tractor technologies until 1994" - I highly doubt this, given that above I link to a 1970s article on ultrasonic guidance in driverless tractors.
• History, "This new tractor could even handle slight headland turns." - I don't know what this means.
• History, end of second paragraph needs a reference
• History, "Subsequently, the idea of a driverless tractor emerged in 2011 and 2012." - No it didn't, it emerged in the 1940s.
• How the technology works - This section probably doesn't need subsections, since it's so short.
• Full autonomy, end of paragraph needs a reference
• Safety, "the safety of the driverless tractor was examined in detail." - What did they find? The next sentences tell how the tractor operated, but doesn't give the result of the study with regard to how safe the tractor was found to be.
• ATC, there is fluff info in this section about Anderson (the fact that he came out of retirement, the fact that he has a second home) that doesn't tell the reader anything about driverless tractors. Trimming needed.
• ATC, "Anderson stated that his goal is to build 25 units of his automated tractor in 2013..." - We're almost halfway through 2013; is there an update on this?
• Fendt, last two sentences are redundant to information earlier in the paragraph.
• CaseIH, "Case IH is a company created by the merging of J.I. Case Company and International Harvester. The company now operates under CNH Global, but the tractors are still branded Case IH." This information is irrelevant with regard to driverless tractors.
• CaseIH, "There is an initial driver, but the autonomous technology is present in the second tractor." This is redundant to the previous sentence.
• CaseIH, "The two machines operate with V2V technology, which is vehicle-to-vehicle communication." You explained what V2V means earlier in the article, it doesn't need repeating in an article this short.
• CaseIH, "Director of marketing, Kevin Monk, said that supervised autonomy is the first step toward driverless tractors and autonomous agriculture technology." - Did he mean just for CaseIH? Because obviously further steps have already been taken by other companies.

In summary, I'm finding a lot of redundancy and fluff in some sections, and a lack of information in others. While the article is significantly improved from where it was at the beginning of the review, it still feels like there has been a lack of reading of the available references. Colleges often have student subscriptions to databases, and professors often have their own access, which would allow access to other references, including the ones I pointed out above that have not been used. See also:

• An article about another company - I don't see a mention of this company in the article
• Tractor and grain cart systems - Discusses potential major impact on grain industry, not discussed in article
• Driverless tractors in the UK and safety - Longer discussion of safety and some potential safeguards/fixes

The above were found in a quick Google search with some basic search terms. If one major company was missed, what else was?

I'm going to leave this review open for a couple days further to see if there is additional work on the article. If not, I will be closing the review as "fail", due mainly to the padding in some sections and gaps in coverage in others. Dana boomer (talk) 17:40, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

As nothing has happened over the past couple of days, I'm going to close this review as having failed. I hope that someone will take on this project, because a lot of good work has been done with this article and I don't think it would take much more to get it the last ways to GA status. Dana boomer (talk) 12:05, 2 June 2013 (UTC)