Kit Franklin will be the first to point out the irony. He is driven by human connection, but he’s built his career on replacing human hands with machines.
“Automation is just the means to the end. The end is always about helping farmers,” he said.
Franklin is a visiting agricultural engineer at Mississippi State University’s Agricultural Autonomy Institute and one of the most recognized figures in the development of autonomous farming worldwide. As the lead at Harper Adams University in England on the Hands-Free Hectare project, the world’s first fully autonomous cropping cycle, Franklin earned interviews with media, spoke before British politicians and royalty, and helped put agricultural autonomy on the global map.
When MSU AAI Director Alex Thomasson traveled to the U.K. in 2021, he made a point of meeting Franklin in person.
“I really wanted to have an international scholar come and spend time with us, and he was the key person I wanted,” Thomasson said.
Franklin attended the institute’s grand opening at MSU in fall 2023 and was involved in some of AAI’s early work at the university. When he returned for a six-month residency in fall 2025, he found something far more substantial than the institute he had seen take its first steps.
Source : msstate.edu