A Multi-machine Cooperation Full Coverage Path Planning Method in Agriculture

Agricultural machinery has become the fundamental facilities in agriculture to lighten the irrigation burden of farmers and improve agricultural efficiency. In order to realize the dispatching management of multi-machine cooperative navigation operation in complex farmland, this paper proposes a novel overall path planning method for multi-machine in multiple operation area, which can be divided into two parts: single path planning and dispatching path planning among multi-areas and multi-machines. The single path planning is addressed considering the operation distance and extra coverage of covering operation modes. The dispatching path planning problem among multi-areas and multi-machines is formulated as a mixed integer programming and optimized operation sequence is solved by improved genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm. A real case in China is conducted to verify the feasibility of the multi-area path planning in agriculture.