A look at John Deere’s 7500A autonomous fairway mower

The 7500A autonomous fairway mower is meant to help ease superintendents’ labor concerns. (Photo: Seth Jones)

The 2019 John Deere Classic may have been life-changing for South Africa’s Dylan Frittelli, who notched his first career PGA Tour victory. Frittelli banked a cool $1 million with the win.

The team at John Deere is hopeful that Frittelli wasn’t the only person with a life-changing million-dollar-moment that week in the Quad Cities. At the company’s Golf Technology Preview event, it debuted a handful of new innovations — most notably, an autonomous fairway mower.

About 75 superintendents were in attendance to see the 7500A fairway mower make its entrance. It mowed past the group with no driver, evoking audible gasps and even a “wow!”

The mower is equipped with a StarFire receiver on the roof to direct it. “You have to give it boundaries, just like kids,” quipped Brooks Hastings, product manager for John Deere Golf.

“We understood, by talking to customers around the globe, their needs. Clearly, labor has been a concern,” said Manny Gan, John Deere’s director of global golf. “We feel we can be really accurate and raise the level of the cut quality and the consistency and maximize the labor.”

The company also showed off its precision GPS PrecisionSprayer, 2700 and 2750 PrecisionCut Triplex Mowers, 2700 and 2750 E-Cut Hybrid Triplex Mowers, as well as announced the acquisition of OnLink, a golf course performance optimization software.

“Fully acquiring OnLink is really an opportunity for us to pull the entire precision turf strategy together; it really allows us to help the superintendents manage their course to a greater degree,” Gan said.

For additional information on Deere’s Golf Technology Preview event, click here.