Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - August 2023 - 2

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
Editorial Director
Bill.Visnic@sae.org
Ingredients for innovation
At John Deere's inaugural Tech Summit
this past spring in Austin, Texas - the
location of one of the company's microtechnology
hubs and a recently purchased
farm on which to conduct R&D
activities - sustainability and innovation
were two of the overarching topics
expounded by various executives.
John Deere is providing the executive
leadership for this year's SAE COMVEC
conference, scheduled for September
19-21 in Schaumburg, Illinois. Not coincidentally,
the theme for the 2023 iteration
is " Sustainability: The New Frontier
for Innovation. "
This convergence comes as no surprise
- nearly every company in the
commercial-vehicle and off-highway mobility
sectors has its sights set on moresustainable
products and business practices.
Innovations in propulsion systems,
machine intelligence, computer vision
and autonomy - all subjects of technical
sessions at the upcoming COMVEC event
(https://comvec.sae.org/program) - are
essential to these efforts.
Over the past five years, Deere has
increased the number of software engineers
in the company by 350%. " If you
think about us as a mechanical, capital
goods company, that's true. But we're
also this tech company with 4,300 software
engineers who are waking up every
day trying to figure out not how to
make the algorithm better so you buy
more stuff - they're actually trying to
make agriculture more sustainable and
more efficient, " said CTO Jahmy
Hindman, whose team is responsible for
building Deere's tech stack, an end-toend
equipment solution consisting of
hardware devices, embedded connectivity
data platforms and applications.
" Our mission by 2030 is to make sure
every one of those 10 trillion corn and
soybean seeds [growing in the U.S. annually]
can be planted, cared for and
harvested autonomously if the farmer
chooses to do so, " Hindman said.
One of the co-chairs of SAE COMVEC
2023, Julian Sanchez, was introduced at
2 August 2023
Ryan Gehm
Editor-in-Chief
Ryan.Gehm@sae.org
the Tech Summit as a " seasoned technologist "
who holds more than 20 patents.
As director of emerging technologies,
Intelligent Solutions Group, his
team is focused on R&D and supporting
the deployment of Deere's next-gen
technologies to improve customer profitability
and sustainability.
Discussing how Deere innovates - its
" ingredients " for innovation - Sanchez
said that one of the first filters used
when deciding what technologies to
pursue is " a deep understanding of customers "
and the economics of farming
- and anticipating how the economics
might change. Deere employs dozens of
psychologists, he said, to help engineers
measure trust in an objective manner
" and track how trust evolves in the use
of a new technology so that we can design
it such that it's appropriately used. "
To help embrace " ideas in the periphery "
that can lead to disruption and
solve " first-order problems, " Deere implemented
a startup-collaborator program
in 2017. " For us the benefit is
those startups are trying to solve
known problems to us with a very different
lens. Bear Flag Robotics is an
example of that and now they're part of
the Deere family. " The Silicon Valleybased
startup retrofits tractors with
patented AI technology and advanced
automation systems.
A willingness to tackle big problems is
an essential ingredient, Sanchez
stressed. " When people ask me, 'What's
the next big thing in agriculture?' Yes, it's
autonomy. Yes, it's AI. But this problem
of understanding the health of the soil at
every farm is a really interesting one, " he
said. " The holy grail around the topic of
soil is being able to do complex chemistry
analysis on the go, at scale, with a
high degree of geospatial accuracy. "
It's a sustainability issue - ensuring
crop efficiency and eliminating waste
- and it's inextricably tied to the need
for innovation. " And we're going after it
with all our might, " he said.
Ryan Gehm, Editor-in-Chief
Chris Clonts
Senior Editor
chris.clonts@saemediagroup.com
Matthew Wolfe
Assistant Editor
matthew.wolfe@saemediagroup.com
Amanda Hosey
Editor, Custom Content
amanda.hosey@saemediagroup.com
Contributors
John Kendall
Europe Editor
Steven Ashley, Sebastian Blanco,
Kami Buchholz, Dan Gilkes,
Paul Weissler
DESIGN
Lois Erlacher
Creative Director
Ray Carlson
Associate Art Director
SALES &
MARKETING
Joe Pramberger
Publisher
joe.pramberger@saemediagroup.com
Kaitlyn Sommer
Marketing Director
kaitlyn.sommer@saemediagroup.com
Martha Tress
Recruitment Sales Manager
+1.724.772.7155
Martha.Tress@sae.org
REGIONAL SALES
North America
New England/Eastern Canada:
ME, VT, NH, MA, RI, QC
Brian Hines
+1.647.296.5014
brian.hines@saemediagroup.com
CT:
Stan Greenfield
+1.203.938.2418
greenco@optonline.net
Mid-Atlantic/Southeast/TX:
TX, OK, LA, AR, MS, AL, TN, FL, SC,
NC, GA, DC, WV, VA
Ray Tompkins
+1.281.313.1004
ray.tompkins@saemediagroup.com
NY, NJ, OH:
Ryan Beckman
+1.973.409.4687
ryan.beckman@saemediagroup.com
PA/DE:
Desiree Stygar
+1.908.300.2539
desiree.stygar@saemediagroup.com
Midwest/Great Lakes:
IN, MI, WI, IA, IL, MN
Chris Kennedy
+1.847.498.4520, x3008
chris@didierandbroderick.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS
+1.866.354.1125
TOH@OMEDA.COM
Midwest/Central Canada:
KS, KY, MO, NE, ND, SD, ON, MB
Bob Casey
+1.847.223.5225
bobc@caseyreps.com
CA, WA, OR, AZ, NM,
Rocky Mountain States:
Tim Powers
+1.908.892.2838
timothy.powers@saemediagroup.com
International
Europe:
Sven Anacker
+49.202.373294.11
sa@intermediapro.de
Sabine Schoett
+49.202.373294.13
ss@intermediapro.de
China:
Alan Ao
+86.21.6140.8920
alan.ao@sae.org
Japan:
Shigenori Nagatomo
+81.3.3661.6138
Nagatomo-pbi@gol.com
South Korea:
Eun-Tae Kim
+82-2-564-3971/2
ksae1@ksae.org
Integrated Media
Consultants
Daniel Barrett
+1.973.409.4762
daniel.barrett@saemediagroup.com
Patrick Harvey
+1.973.409.4686
patrick.harvey@saemediagroup.com
Todd Holtz
+1.973.545.2566
todd.holtz@saemediagroup.com
Rick Rosenberg
+1.973.545.2565
rick.rosenberg@saemediagroup.com
Jason Setti
+1.973.874.0271
jason.setti@saemediagroup.com
TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
https://comvec.sae.org/program
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - August 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - August 2023
