Precision Farming Without GPS: How BlueSpace Can Keep Farms Running When Signals Go Dark

Precision agriculture is becoming essential as farmers face critical labor shortages coupled with rising demand with even tighter harvest windows. Autonomous tractors and robots – guided by GPS – are helping to optimize yields and lower costs. But what happens when that GPS signal disappears?

That scenario played out in real life in May last year when a powerful solar storm disrupted GPS systems across the U.S. during the critical spring planting season. Farmers who depend on GPS-based tools like automated row shutoffs (which prevent double-planting by turning off individual planter rows) and variable rate input applications (which tailor seed or chemical use based on soil conditions) were suddenly grounded.

The outages led to costly planting delays and yield losses (University of Illinois’ farmdoc daily). “All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now, shut down because of the solar storm,” said Nebraska farmer Kevin Kenney. “We’re right in the middle of corn planting” (404 Media).

These disruptions aren’t rare. In 2023, for example, Australian farmers lost access to GPS for up to three days during peak sowing season. As the industry adopts higher levels of automation, and grows more reliant on GPS enabled navigation, the stakes only get higher. The need for systems that can continue operations even with GPS denial is becoming increasingly urgent.

How can BlueSpace help to address this?

BlueSpace’s Positioning and Perception System was field-tested at an almond orchard in Dixon, California – where dense tree cover caused severe GPS degradation and denial. Even without GPS, BlueSpace delivered industry-leading performance, maintaining an average cross-track error of just 0.6% across all test runs.

And positioning is just one piece of the puzzle.

With no need for additional hardware, BlueSpace’s universal perception system detects nearby objects and people – whether they are fully visible or occluded. This perception system does not require any prior training, ensuring that whether or not it’s something your system has seen before, it can be detected right out of the box for all objects.  In precision farming, having a reliable positioning system when GPS is unavailable is critical for keeping autonomous equipment running safely and minimizing downtime.