Last December, CNH Industrial, the parent company to Case IH and New Holland, held what it called a “Tech Day” just outside of Phoenix, Ariz. For the event, CNH executives brought together journalists from across North America and Europe to reveal what the company’s two main brands had up their collective sleeve in the fields of automation and autonomy.
There was a lot of new machinery and tech sitting out in that Arizona field to show off, most of which hasn’t yet hit the market but will eventually see commercial release. Much of it was the direct result of incorporating technology imported to the CNH brands from Raven Technologies, which was recently purchased by CNH.
“What I would say with the Raven acquisition and what type of opportunities it has brought for CNH, Raven was this great stand-alone company that was building autonomy on their own path,” said Parag Garg, chief digital product officer at CNH. “One of the great things CNH brings is we have all these self-propelled platforms. That (Raven technology) will help bring autonomy to them faster.”
A centrepiece of the Tech Day event was the T4 Electric Power tractor, which was developed in association with the small California-based startup Monarch Tractor. It will be one of the machines soon to hit the market with complete autonomous capability. We’ve shown you that tractor in detail in the January 31, 2023, issue of Grainews.
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CNH plans for “more than 15 new tractor launches, 10 combine launches, 19 crop production launches and over 30 precision technology releases between now and the end of 2027.”
But there was much more to talk about as well. Some of the technology shown to the media at the Tech Day event had been featured as under development on Raven’s website for several months before the CNH takeover. One of them, the Driver Assist Harvest Solution system for tractors, is now destined to appear as a feature of Case IH and New Holland brands in the future.
“The Driver Assist Harvest Solution keeps the tractor perfectly in sync with the combine harvester when unloading grain — giving the combine operator seamless control over the unloading process,” said a CNH press release. “This makes the full operation more efficient, with less grain spillage in the process.”
The Driver Assist Harvest Solution is like John Deere’s Machine Sync system introduced by the green brand several years ago but it goes a little further, working fully autonomously. Deere still requires an operator in the tractor in its system.
CNH also announced a new Driverless Tillage Solution feature at Tech Day. Like Deere’s autonomous 8R tractor (which is still waiting for official market release at the time of writing), CNH’s Driverless Tillage Solution will allow for control of an autonomous tractor performing tillage operations from a mobile device. CNH says it is built on technology imported from Raven as well as the substantial autonomous technology CNH had already developed in-house.
Then there was the baler technology that uses a lidar sensor to scan the windrow in front of the tractor for density, volume and direction. The tractor and baler use that information input to automatically control steering, forward speed and baler settings to ensure the baler follows the windrow precisely for the most accurate crop feeding possible. According to CNH, this results in optimized bale shape, increased productivity, enhanced operator comfort and reduced fuel consumption.
Also on display during the Tech Day was Case IH’s Trident 5550 autonomous spreader, which the brand originally debuted at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, last summer. As CNH executives pointed out, a significant level of automation already exists in the company’s combines and both Case IH Patriot and New Holland Guardian sprayers can come equipped with application control automation.
“Our goal is really to automate the entire farming fleet,” said Garg. “You’ll continue to see us work rapidly across the CNH brand lines, working with our brands and our customer base to figure out what are the most opportunistic areas to go automate that can create the most benefit and value.
“We’re on the road to full autonomy. We focus on delivering an autonomous tech stack that scales across all production cycles for the cash crop segment: crop preparation, planting/seeding, crop care, harvest, hay and forage. Focusing on automation and autonomy is not taking farmers out of farming — it’s making their machines more productive with functional automation. Our focus is to make the precision technology on our equipment so smart that the customer can focus on the farm and let CNH Industrial take care of the rest.”
While a release date has been set by CNH for some of these advanced technology products, such as late 2023 for the T4 Electric tractor, dates for others such as the autonomous tillage system have not yet been announced.
