Digital Agriculture and the Journey Towards Autonomous Machines

Abstract:

Agriculture is one of the most complex and robotics-intensive domains you can imagine: large machines operating in unstructured environments, dynamic obstacles like people, animals, and weather, and the need for centimeter-level precision across miles of terrain. Unlike factory floors, farms are unbounded, safety-critical, and demand scalable autonomy. This seminar will show how digital technologies are driving the transformation of agriculture from automation to autonomy, and why this environment offers challenging problems in robotics.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. John F. Reid is Executive Director of the Center for Digital Agriculture and Research Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with joint appointments in the Siebel School of Computing & Data Science,  the Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, he has more than 35 years of experience spanning academia and industry, including 19 years at John Deere, where he led enterprise initiatives in robotics, autonomy, and advanced technology. His research focuses on the digital transformation of agriculture, with emphasis on robotics, AI-enabled autonomy, and safe self-learning systems for production agriculture. At Illinois, he leads multidisciplinary efforts to develop intelligent, sustainable, and scalable solutions that connect computing, engineering, and agricultural sciences into practiced solutions.