CNH’s Tech Vision: Farmer UX and Automated Fleets

CNH Industrial is integrating artificial intelligence and user-centric design to transition from traditional agricultural machinery to fully automated fleets. The company is focusing on a development process that incorporates direct feedback from farmers to ensure that autonomous capabilities solve specific operational challenges rather than existing as isolated technological achievements.

At the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in San Francisco on April 6, 2026, Lisa Jackson, VP of UX and design for CNH, detailed the company’s approach to creating user experiences (UX) for vehicle cabins and mobile applications. Jackson emphasized that CNH utilizes prototypes on farms and with dealers to gather real-time feedback, allowing the company to resolve software issues before the development team finalizes the commercial versions.

AI and Automation Strategy

The role of AI in CNH’s vision is to move beyond static use cases and address the “exception cases” that farmers encounter daily, such as rapid changes in weather and environmental variants. By leveraging AI, the company aims to match user experiences to the specific needs of individual growers, acknowledging that requirements vary significantly from one farmer to another.

Current implementations of this technology include combine automation, which utilizes a multi-spectral camera and 16 sensors to optimize performance. Other innovations include the SenseApply™ sprayer automation, which employs machine vision to improve precision in crop protection.

This technical trajectory is part of a broader connected ecosystem designed to provide predictive and sustainable systems. According to CNH CEO Gerrit Marx, AI is one of the primary enablers for rapid innovation across the company’s products, people, and processes, aimed at the strategic challenge of producing more food with less land under difficult conditions.

Strategic and Commercial Goals

The shift toward autonomy and AI is tied to specific corporate financial targets. CNH’s 2030 strategy involves nearly doubling Precision Tech sales as a percentage of its Agriculture Net Sales. This objective underscores the company’s move toward a high-tech, software-driven business model.

The company’s intelligent Ag Tech solutions are designed to support the entire crop cycle, including:

• Field preparation
• Seeding and planting
• Crop protection
• Harvesting

User Experience Philosophy

CNH’s design philosophy rejects the use of broad archetypes in favor of individual user needs. Jackson noted a guiding principle in her work: If you know one farmer, you know one farmer.

We go out with prototypes onto farms, with dealers, and we let people see the software we’re hoping to commercialise soon and get that real-time feedback. Farmers are opinionated. We get strong, strong viewpoints about what’s working — what’s not working — and we hope to get all the kinks out before our development team gets hold of it

Lisa Jackson, VP of UX and design for CNH

This iterative process is intended to ensure that the transition to fully automated fleets is grounded in the practical realities of rural operations, starting with the automation of small tasks before scaling to more complex fleet management.