I had the chance to sit in on a panel discussion about autonomy and automation at the National Farm Machinery Show earlier this month. The panel featured leaders from Sabanto, Solinftec, Agtonomy and Case IH. The question about how to get farmers on the path to autonomy came up. Kendal Quandahl, Case IH precision segment lead, says it starts with automating those repeatable tasks that farmers deal with every day.  

“Talking about something like Harvest Command. We know that as the season goes on, as it gets later and later throughout harvest, we’re not making those manual machine adjustments the way we should be on a combine because we’re tired and we just want to get done. Incorporating something like Harvest Command that comes in base on every single Case IH combine that you have, you set your goals and the machine uses a combination of 16 sensors to help adjust everything in the machine by itself to capture as much grain as it possibly can. Really keying in on those common challenges, there’s a lot of features in the market today that help us today that fit well into this automation category.”

With 16 sensors, the Harvest Command system can control 7 adjustments in the combine as conditions change across the field.