Scott Hollister talks to Dave Anderson about John Deere’s journey with autonomous equipment
Editor Scott Hollister joins Dave Anderson, product manager, at the John Deere Booth at the 2025 GCSAA Conference and Trade Show to discuss John Deere‘s journey with autonomous mowers.
Transcript
Scott Hollister: Well hey everybody, Scott Hollister with Golfdom Magazine, and we are at the 2025 GCSAA Conference and Trade Show. We’re here in the John Deere booth following a really exciting announcement. Dave Anderson, Dave is a product manager for autonomy. You have a lot of other fun titles that you can throw in there, if you like, but just had a really great press event where we got a little sneak peek at an autonomous fairway unit. This technology sort of builds on things that John Deere has been doing with landscaping, in the pit and quarry industry and agriculture. Talk a little bit about the journey where, from the golf perspective, how did this product get to kind of where it is today, and how did you build upon some of the other technologies that have been available in John Deere other spaces?
Dave Anderson: Right, right, so John Deere, in its whole, has been on a technology journey, as you know, from many, many years ago, a couple decades ago on the agricultural side, that evolved over time, to where we started to integrate technology with things like our GPS precision sprayer, and grew. We always knew that technology needed to grow in the golf space, and that was kind of our first entry, and we started to move down the autonomous journey as others have been as well. We’ve been doing this for quite a few years, kind of monitoring the situation in the marketplace, doing some things internally, to understand what the right solution is. So as that technology has evolved and actually become more integrated with other turf products, we were able to take advantage of it on the autonomous fairway mower
Hollister: Yeah, it has to be hugely helpful to have that technology platform in place in other industries. So a lot of the trial and error that you might normally have to go through has someone else got to deal with that at another stage in this journey, that’d be huge for what you guys are doing at golf.
Anderson: That’s right. So we have the other industries to leverage, as well as our own kind of internal development as we’ve learned different things, and what we’ve had to do is adapt that with our deep customer understanding of the golf industry, to understand how to scale that correctly into the right solution for a mower. And as Chase said when he was up there, the autonomy journey is just beginning. Fairways, there are other areas, so seeing a fairway mower is a big step in the right direction, but it’s just one step that we’ll see going down the road.
Hollister: I won’t hold you to this one, won’t hold John Deere to this. But what is, if you’re a superintendent watching this, what does that path look like when these things might be a part of fleets around the country?
Anderson: Yeah. So, it’s really tough to tell the technology is constantly evolving and changing. There’s also regulations around autonomy that constantly change, so it changes our path somewhat. So over the next few years, we’re going to continue to see it evolve, and you’ll probably see more exposure to the technology on golf courses, whether it be ours or, you know, anybody else’s as well.
Hollister: Yeah, fascinating stuff. Dave Anderson, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. I’m Scott Hollister with Golfdom Magazine. Thanks for watching.
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