Ergonomic evaluation for mobile agricultural machinery

任何参观农业机械展览会的人都会证实，由于采用了新技术，这些机器正变得越来越复杂。目前的趋势是将传统上由人工完成的部分任务自动化。自动驾驶技术是自动化的一个例子，在加拿大农场越来越普遍。在过去的十年中，我利用驾驶模拟器研究了引导技术对人类操作员精神负荷的影响，这使我成为将自动化应用于移动农业机械的先驱。我在过去5年的研究表明，不能孤立地考虑制导系统的人体工程学影响，因为制导任务的自动化可以改变其余任务的性质。为了了解如何为移动农业机械设计自动化，以避免技能退化，并允许人类操作员在自动化期间保持对机器功能的适当理解水平，正在进行的研究是必要的。在接下来的5年里，我将专注于短期目标，为移动农业机械确定适当的自动化设计，为半自动移动农业机械的操作员确定适当的反馈，以保持可接受的态势感知水平，并调查外部压力源是否会改变半自动移动农业机械的首选自动化水平。曼尼托巴大学农业工效学实验室正在进行的研究在北美是独一无二的，需要解决已发表文献中的空白。加拿大农民将受益于未来的农业机器，这些机器具有从人为因素角度设计的自动化功能；这样的机器将减少操作员的工作量，提高驾驶员的意识。

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.