“Nothing is in the field more than the pivot, and yet most of them tell you very little, if anything at all, about the crop,” says Daniel Jenkins, vice president of sales for Autonomous Pivot.
Autonomous Pivot’s technology uses cameras and ground penetrating radar to collect soil-moisture data, crop imagery, rainfall, pressure, GPS location, and irrigation activity to help growers make better irrigation and crop-management decisions. The company sees centre pivots, traditionally used exclusively for irrigation and fertigation, as underutilized pieces of equipment that are in the field more than any producer or agrologist. It aims to convert the centre pivot into its own reporting scout in the field.
Autonomous Pivot installed its technology at EMILI’s Innovation Farms MacGregor site during the 2026 season. EMILI is validating the technology’s insights about field conditions, irrigation optimization, and pest and disease alerts.
“Development is a tenuous process because you’re asking a grower who has never seen what they need to imagine it or envision it, and we’re trying to build things that are useful. Being able to partner with entities like EMILI that facilitate exposure to the technology, that’s been something that has definitely stood out,” said Jenkins.
“Every university has a startup incubator…but what I really appreciate about EMILI is they’re taking the other side of that and saying, ‘Hey farmers, there are tons of technologies that could be useful to you, and it can be very challenging to look at the sea of options and choose something that’s going to benefit you. We can do that with you – we can take our best and brightest and put them on your team and have you look at this technology critically, and see where it provides value.’ And that’s where getting the technology in front of growers, having them there to use it, look at it, learn from it and analyze it, has been beneficial.”
At the core of the Autonomous Pivot system is automated water balance. The grower tells the company where the system should be installed, and Autonomous Pivot fetches database information for soil holding water capacity and applied irrigation rates, using sensors in the field to make those calculations.
The technology consists of a camera unit which captures wide angle and narrow depth of field imagery up to every five minutes, enabling both submillimeter feature detection and a birds eye view of the field. It can detect pests, disease, damage, deficiencies and stresses, on top of emergence and crop staging. GPS allows the user to understand how much the pivot has moved, while a tipping rain bucket measures rainfall, and ground penetrating radar provides mobile, non-invasive moisture feedback.
“With the system, we’re able to get hundreds of points of data from all around the field. We’re able to see how moisture is being maintained in different areas, and if they are building, maintaining or losing moisture from revolutions to revolution of the pivot,” said Jenkins.
Autonomous Pivot’s technology was installed at EMILI’s Innovation Farms MacGregor site ahead of the 2026 growing season.
Those data points are aggregated by Autonomous Pivot’s app, which shows the end user a stream of data in real-time in the form of tables and graphs the field, which is split into eight sections, essentially giving the producer eight areas of management as if they had eight separate probes or static sensors in the field. The app allows the producer to see a summary of the field’s water balance and soil moisture as a result of rainfall events, irrigation, and evaporation. Jenkins said improved efficiency is directly proportionate to attention paid – the system collects all the fine details so paying a lot of attention doesn’t equal a lot of time or energy.
“The most important point is that we use infrastructure already moving through the field to provide growers with continuous, practical information. The goal is not simply to collect more data for the sake of data—it is to help growers make more informed, efficient, and proactive management decisions.”
Visit EMILI’s Innovation Farms to learn more about this project and other activities. EMILI hosts field tours and demonstrations on Innovation Farms throughout the season to showcase new agricultural technology, expand innovation opportunities, and increase understanding and adoption of digital tools.