March 5, 2021
Florentijn Degroote

CNH Industrial

Building autonomous combines with CNH Industrial

Computer Vision

Impact

ML6 helped to move an algorithm to a multispectral camera. ML6 helped downscale and optimize the algorithm and helped get it embedded by working together with the camera provider. Through the collaboration, CNH was able to go into production much faster. They now also have the necessary expertise to deploy algorithms on an embedded system for future use cases.

Intro to the customer

CNH Industrial is a global leader in capital goods that implements design, manufacturing, distribution, commercial and financial activities in international markets. Through their 12 brands, CNH Industrial makes the vehicles that keep agriculture and industry growing.

A combine harvester is a factory on wheels. In the journey towards fully autonomous combines, both aspects (the driving aspect as well as the factory aspect) needs to be automated. To do so, a global team is developing a wide range of automatic features. The Electronics group, responsible for bringing Proof of Concepts into production, worked with ML6 to accelerate the integration of their AI algorithms into existing embedded hardware.

"Working with ML6 is investing in our own people. We believe it’s important that we have internal knowledge, and through our collaboration we received a knowledge transfer in a very efficient way to bring our people to a higher level. We buy knowledge, we buy flexibility, we make an investment in our people towards the future."
Thomas Mahieu
Combine automation lead engineer at CNH Industrial

The importance of building internal AI knowledge

With innovation high on the agenda, CNH Industrial has developed strong AI capabilities in-house.  As the use cases are custom and complex, the organization looks to build up internal knowledge on how to build, deploy, monitor and improve algorithms. More specifically, CNH Industrial was looking to build internal knowledge on how to move algorithms from training environments to embedded hardware systems in combines.

“The symbiotic way of working between the people of CNHi and our team is the exact reason why this project turned out to be a resounding success. I'm looking back on an exciting time and especially liked the full disclosure from both sides, striving towards the same end goal. And we reached it.”
Florentijn Degroote
Machine Learning Engineer at ML6

Joint innovation with ML6

To build up that knowledge as quickly and efficiently as possible, CNH Industrial turned to ML6 to help move an algorithm to a multispectral camera. ML6 helped downscale and optimize the algorithm and helped get it embedded by working together with the camera provider. Through the collaboration, CNH was able to go into production much faster. They now also have the necessary expertise to deploy algorithms on an embedded system for future use cases.


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