FROM PROTOTYPE TO PRODUCT
Since joining Sabanto in 2019, Adam Gaynor has been at the core of the team’s foundation, contributing his expertise to our system’s software and hardware development and R&D. After earning his BSEE in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Miami University, Adam spent his first year at Sabanto creating a prototype autonomy solution and authored much of the early vehicle control software.
Six years ago, Sabanto had never explored the sod industry. Rather, the company was doing business Farming-as-a-Service for row crop farmers in the Midwest. Adam is part of the original Sabanto team, a dedicated group of six individuals who traveled to farms, hand-wired hardware, and wrote software code late into the night. Countless stories of camaraderie are passed around from these days. The team worked alongside fields from a camping tent before upgrading to a workspace in an enclosed trailer. Adam gained firsthand experience in agriculture during this time, working directly with farmers and driving farm equipment.
Adam working late into the night with a colleague, Aaron Petersdorf, creating one of the first retrofit autonomous solutions.
Adam’s contributions to Sabanto are remarkable. Early in his professional career, he developed the operating system for the vehicle Path Finding Module (vPFM®) and designed the CAN bridge that communicates with the vPFM through the tractor’s CAN bus. He also improved the operating system’s security to protect sensitive data and withstand threats.
Today, as Lead Embedded Engineer, he and his team strengthen the foundation for the vPFM, including the operating system and cellular network communication. Currently, he’s focused on improving the vPFM update process. When an update takes place, it will wipe the prior code that is no longer needed and allow users to start with a clean slate. The operating system and updates are built to be robust so people don’t notice when updates happen.
Adam reflected on Sabanto’s transition from Farming-as-a-Service for row crop growers to a company with a commercialized product focused on the sod market.
“When we were operating the system ourselves, we had a handle on what the potential problems might be and how to work around them. The moment you hand it off to someone else, those problems have to fix themselves seamlessly in the background,” Adam explains.
As Sabanto continues to grow, Adam is excited about the technological advancements in autonomy coming in the years ahead. Behind the scenes, groundbreaking work is underway, poised to give Sabanto users expanded capabilities. With his leadership, progressive mindset, and exceptional talents, Adam continues to drive Sabanto’s bold mission forward, “To create simple, safe, and cost-effective technologies that enable the future of agriculture.”
We’d love to have you join our monthly newsletter list.
We promise not to overwhelm you — we want to share how autonomy is changing agriculture. Along the way, you’ll get to know our customers, the team we’ve assembled at Sabanto, and the groundbreaking things that Steward™ is accomplishing at farms across the country and beyond.
To get on the list, sign up below 👇