Case IH has been awarded the annual Good Design® Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum. The museum’s annual awards recognise the most innovative and cutting-edge industrial, product, and graphic designs produced around the world.

First revealed at the Farm Progress Show in 2016, the tractor was designed by Case’s in-house industrial design centre and based around the Case IH Magnum tractor.

The designers focused on both form and function, delivering a design that imagines a future where traditional operator cabs are eliminated.

“This award marks a satisfying conclusion to the celebration of our 175th anniversary,” says Andreas Klauser, Case IH brand president.

“The autonomous concept tractor is perhaps the best illustration of how we are living up to the anniversary’s tagline – celebrating the past by looking toward the future.”

The tractor has been shown at trade fairs around the world. Feedback received from various farmers would indicate they want to retain the operator’s cab for the meantime.

“From talking to customers in different countries, we see that for the near term, they want to have the flexibility of still having a cab on the tractor. This is the direction we are taking because we want our customers to feel comfortable as they begin to delegate more tasks to the machines themselves,” says Klauser.

Some of the technology on the concept tractor has already found its way into the current lineup, such as AccuTurnTM. This technology takes the guesswork out of turning on headlands, with automated headland-turning technology powered by software logic from the autonomous concept tractor.

Also, the next generation of AFS (advanced farming systems) provides hands-free, automatic and repeatable turns for increased productivity, improved accuracy and reduced operator fatigue.

“We will see more AFS product content on our offering to come in 2018,” says Klauser.