GrainsWest Summer 2018

section control. It’s crazy, because a lot of farmers in Europe are much more inter- ested in it than here in North America. GW : Why do you think that is? BT: In European nations, they have smaller fields, so the cost of a $10,000 to $15,000 piece of equipment [like a new tractor with automated controls] is just not justified. GW : Is this a complicated program to run? BT: This is totally do-it-yourself, but we—and when I say we, I mean me— haven’t completely de-geeked it yet. You have to buy a few little parts like a circuit board, USB adapter, antenna and basic transmitter—do some wiring and soldering. You do have to know a little bit of electronics. GW: There’s a large community around AgOpenGPS. Do you know how many people are using it? BT: There’s no download counter, so I have no idea. The software is stored on GitHub, and all you know is when people comment or fork it, which is when they download it and make their own version. There are plenty of people who have done that, and the licensing is such that if you download AgOpenGPS and you make changes, all you have to do is make sure the source code is available. That’s the entire limitation—if you improve it, share it. GW: How interested are farmers in automation? BT: There are a lot of processes—seeding, combining, some of these more complex operations we do on the farm—it’s going to be a long road to automate those. The auto industry has had the technology for 15 or 20 years, but it’s just starting to be put out. They’re at the point where simple routes can be programmed and run, but fully autonomous cars are not there. Second, when we talk about autono- mous vehicles, we have to ask, “What is an autonomous vehicle?” A little radio-controlled car is driverless, but there’s still someone holding a remote control. The Society of Automotive Engineers has broken it down into levels of autonomy. When we talk autosteer, like cruise control in your car, that’s one level. It’s operating your gas pedal. You don’t have to do anything. Second-level means the piece of equipment can steer itself. Then you get into third-level, where it can turn around and do some basic functions. The Food Issue 2018 Grains West 24 Farmer Brian Tischler draws on his work in biomedical electronics and digital game programming to create open-source software that pilots autonomous farm vehicles.