The importance of real-time visual information for the remote supervision of an autonomous agricultural machine

Canadian Biosystems Engineering

article

Ivan Panfilov¹  Danny D. Mann¹ 

[1] Department of Biosystems Engineering, University of Manitoba

关键词: Autonomous agricultural machines;    visual information;    automation interface;    remote supervision;   

DOI  :  10.7451/CBE.2018.60.2.11

学科分类：农业科学（综合）

来源: Canadian Society of Agricultural Engineering

【 摘 要 】

“Supervised autonomy” is a term that best describes theautonomous agricultural machines currently beingenvisioned. Such machines will be able to workautonomously, but require human supervision. The topicof interface design, however, has not received sufficientattention by designers. The goal of this study was toinvestigate the importance of live video for remotesupervision of autonomous agricultural machines. Thestudy was conducted using an autonomous agriculturalmachine control interface simulator, which providedinformation of machine status using graphical indicators(which interpreted and displayed sensor information) andlive video (which was presented as seen by the camera).The participants of the study performed the role of thesupervisor of an autonomous agricultural machine. Theimportance of live video was assessed by comparing theparticipant’s performance during trials with and withoutvideo. Information about the gaze direction was obtainedwith an eye-tracking system. The results showed thatgraphical indicators are the preferred source of machinestatus information, and live video is a secondary source. Atthe beginning of the experiment, participants split theirattention evenly between the graphical indicators and thelive video, but by the end of the experiment, their focuswas on the graphical indicators 70% of the time. Morethan 75% of the participants indicated that the live videohelped them to understand machine functions better andthey felt more secure when the video footage was present.The participants suggested that live video should beavailable either full time or on demand. Control interfacedesigners should consider including live video on theinterface for autonomous agricultural machines to provideadditional decision-making support to the supervisor.

【 授权许可】

CC BY