A Comparative Study on the Operational Efficiency of Joystick and Touch Screen Control Methods for Sugarcane Harvesters

Reducing cumbersome mechanical control components is one of the trends of modern agricultural machinery towards a high degree of automation. Whether the control components of sugarcane harvesters can gradually be replaced by central control screens, similar to car cabins, is an unresolved question. At the level of human machine interaction, this involves comparing the efficiency between joystick and touch screen control. This paper conducts a simulated experiment to compare and study the efficiency and user experience of joystick and touch screen control in adjusting the topper and base cutter heights of sugarcane harvesters, aiming to provide a reasonable basis for the design of control interfaces in sugarcane harvester cabins. The electromyographic signals, experiment duration, and subjective cognitive evaluations of participants in both the topper and base cutter groups were analyzed. The results showed that the efficiency, learnability, and ease of use of different control methods varied under different operational tasks. For the topper that corresponds to the operating behavior and height transformation in real time, joystick control demonstrated superior ease of use and operational efficiency compared to touch screen control, with weaker learnability. There was no discernible difference in muscle activation levels between the two control methods. Consequently, joystick control is deemed more suitable for the height adjustment of the topper. Regarding the base cutter with non-real-time mapping of operating behavior and height changes, no significant disparity in ease of use and learnability was observed between the two control methods. Touch screen control yielded lower muscle activation levels and garners higher overall subjective cognitive scale ratings. Thus, touch screen control is considered more suitable for base cutter height adjustment. Lastly, the paper proposes the optimal combination of software and hardware for control components in sugarcane harvester cabins, and provides an objective and multidimensional experimental analysis method for future research on similar human machine interaction interfaces.