Operator-Automation Interaction in Agricultural Vehicles

Over the last 25 years, considerable research has been conducted in an effort to understand human behavior in automated systems. These efforts have yielded a number of valuable findings about the overall nature of human-automation interaction across a wide range of domains, such as aviation, surface transportation, medical systems, manufacturing environments, and maritime vehicles. In this article, we provide an overview of another domain that has been heavily influenced by automation: agricultural vehicles. We share some observations about the impacts of automation on human behavior within this domain, discuss some of the tools and methods being used to investigate these issues, and speculate about the lessons to be learned about human-automation interaction from this arena.