Exceeding the Expectations with an Innovative Cabin Experience
Argo Tractors is a leader in designing and manufacturing agricultural machinery. Established in 2007 as part of the Argo Group, Argo Tractors now has a production capacity of more than 20,000 tractors under two main brands: Landini and McCormick.
The company aims to be an innovator and a leader in the industry, working to stay at the forefront of agricultural mechatronics challenges. In recent years, the team observed a shift in customer expectations and market dynamics regarding the experience inside the tractor's cabin.
"The tractor cabin has transitioned from a structure which primarily protects drivers from the weather to a fully functional and more highly customised operator environment", said Argo Tractors R&D department. "It's the operator’s work station. It’s where many of our customers spend their entire working day for weeks and indeed months at a time."
Agricultural machineries have become more and more complex in recent years, and the system that controls them has to evolve to make it easy and comfortable for the operator to do their job, says C.D.
In this context, Argo started developing a new system for the cabin of its high-power McCormick X7 and McCormick X8 tractors. Clever Cab is McCormick's answer to the need for a more comfortable and customizable cabin experience. One key feature is the two 12-inch screens that provide vital information and control every function of the tractor, from lights to climate, headland management, and system settings.
Our goal was to give users a system that felt familiar, something like what they use every day on their smartphones or tablets. We wanted to revolutionize what was available in the agricultural sector, continues C.D.
Digital Cluster and Side Display Powered by Qt
With Clever Cab in mind, the Argo Tractors team set out to find the hardware and framework that would enable them to realize their ambitious vision.
They partnered with Actia for the hardware and the low-level operating system, then chose Qt Framework to develop the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) for the 12-inch central digital cluster, which displays key driving and operational information, and the 12-inch Data Screen Manager (DSM) on the side, offering widget-based customization and advanced controls.
The team at Argo was already familiar with Qt. What they like about Qt Framework is the ability to customize and optimize the graphical components for their specific needs, while also being able to reuse the same code base on both screens. This was a key factor in the decision.
With Qt Framework, we were able to design a widget system that users can configure to their needs. They can choose which widgets to display, resize them, and reposition them on the screen. Furthermore, we could customize the interface based on language and regional requirement, which is critical for a global product, says C.D.
Argo uses Qt Creator as its Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The team worked closely with the internal style team and an external design partner to define specifications for the Graphic User Interface (GUI) and deploy it to the hardware.
Qt Framework allowed us to validate the code once in a desktop environment and then port it to the different hardware. This level of portability is a major strength in an industry where hardware configurations can vary widely across product lines, explains C.D.
Faster Development and Future Scalability
Argo Tractors successfully launched the new McCormick X7 with Clever Cab in the Irish market.
Thanks to Qt, they built a smooth experience on the DSM Plus, delivering on their vision and providing operators with a comfortable way to control their work inside the cabin.
Qt helped us reduce development time by an estimated 40%, thanks to ready-to-use components, reusable code, and a well-documented framework, explains C.D.
With an estimated 40% reduction in development time and a cabin experience that ranks among the best in the industry, Argo Tractors now intends to introduce the HMI to other products in their portfolio.
The team has already tested porting their Qt-based interface to smaller screens, and the results indicate successful and cost-effective scalability.
It's really promising, we tested the system on a smaller screen and the porting was done almost at zero cost. This level of portability and reusability is almost impossible to find when you develop HMIs for embedded systems, concludes C.D.
About Argo Tractors
Argo Tractors is an important family-owned industrial group that designs, manufactures, and markets tractors, services, and parts worldwide. It features a portfolio of technological brands that have reached key milestones in agricultural mechanization.
Argo Tractors is one of the companies belonging to the Argo Group and was established in 2007 with the intention of creating a tractor manufacturing undertaking of worldwide importance.
With a production capacity of more than 20,000 tractors manufactured and marketed under the Landini and McCormick brands, Argo Tractors is one of the most important players in the western world.
True to the philosophy of the Argo Group, Argo Tractors’ dealings are founded on strongly integrated manufacturing and trading activities that link the various business areas, i.e. sales, R&D. engineering, purchases, logistics, pre and after-sales services, in a univocal and linear way.
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