Student information

MSc thesis topic: Coverage path planning for autonomous field operations

Soil compaction is an important problem in modern agriculture. Agricultural machines tend to become larger and heavier which may severely damage soil structure, particularly if fields are worked under wet soil conditions. Two potential ways to mitigate soil compaction are (1) controlled traffic farming (CTF) where vehicles can only drive on pre-planned tracks, and (2) using smaller and lighter autonomous vehicles. Either of the solutions requires carefully planned paths over the field while they will also benefit from optimizing routes over those paths.

This project is related to the project “Field2Cover” and the open source software library with the same name (https://fields2cover.github.io/index.html). The thesis topic can focus on software engineering aspects and/or application aspects of the work. Below you can find a list of possible research objectives.

Objectives and Research questions

  • Optimize the order of headland coverage, sorting each row in the headlands to optimize the length. That can also be a capacitated problem.
  • Allow curved swaths. This is supported on f2c and one implementation is offered, but more research is required.
  • Include support for capacitated vehicle problems. Mainly focusing on harvesting
  • Path planning for turns on headlands, without getting out of the headlands. In this case, for going from one swath to another. This can be used for orchards, to avoid hitting trees.
  • Path planning avoiding small obstacles in the headlands

Requirements

  • Strong analytical skills
  • Knowledge of Python scripting is a must
  • Preferably some agronomic knowledge

Literature and information

  • Mier, G., J. Valente and S. De Bruin, 2023. Fields2Cover: An Open-Source Coverage Path Planning Library for Unmanned Agricultural Vehicles. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 8(4): 2166-2172.
  • Jensen, M.F., Bochtis, D., Sørensen, C.G., 2015. Coverage planning for capacitated field operations, part II: Optimisation. Biosystems Engineering, 139, 149-164.
  • Several MGI theses (e.g., https://edepot.wur.nl/634521; https://edepot.wur.nl/634470)

Theme(s): Modelling & visualisation