Ergonomic evaluation for mobile agricultural machinery

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Any visit to an exhibition of agricultural machinery will confirm that these machines are becoming increasingly complex due to the incorporation of new technologies. The current trend is to automate some portion of the tasks traditionally completed by the human operator. Auto-steer technology is an example of automation that is becoming increasingly common on Canadian farms. Research done over the past decade to understand the impact of guidance technology on the mental workload of the human operator using a driving simulator has enabled me to become a pioneer in the application of automation to mobile agricultural machines. My research over the past 5 years has shown that the ergonomic impacts of guidance systems cannot be considered in isolation because automation of the guidance task can change the nature of the remaining tasks. On-going research is necessary to understand how to design automation for mobile agricultural machines that avoids degradation of skills and allows the human operator to maintain an appropriate level of understanding of the machine functions during periods of automation. In the next 5 years, I will focus on short-term objectives to determine an appropriate automation design for a mobile agricultural machine, to identify the appropriate feedback to maintain an acceptable level of situation awareness for the operator of a semi-autonomous mobile agricultural machine and to investigate whether an external stressor changes the preferred level of automation for a semi-autonomous mobile agricultural machine. The research being conducted in the Agricultural Ergonomics Laboratory at the University of Manitoba is unique in North America and is needed to address a void in the published literature. Canadian farmers will benefit from future agricultural machines having automation features designed from a human factors perspective; such machines will reduce operator workload and improve driver awareness.