Research On Optimal Complete Coverage Path Planning For Rice Transplanter

Precision agriculture is integrated with global positioning technology,multi-sensor technology,remote sensing technology,geographic information system and intelligent control and decision technology,which aims to achieve the autonomization,informatization and intellectualization of agriculture.The autonomous navigation technology is the key to precision agriculture and also is the future trends for agricultural development.Over the past few decades,with the 3S technology and artificial intelligence technology becoming mature gradually,autonomous navigation system has been widely applied in the agricultural machineries.Autonomous agricultural machineries application in precision agriculture is one of the key issues to be considered noteworthy to solve the shortage of agricultural labor force and dullness of the operation and to improve the efficiency.With the wide adoption of GPS navigation system in agricultural machineries,as one of the key technologies the complete coverage path planning technology is becoming more and more crucial in autonomous navigation tasks.Combining this technology with GPS can provide the optimal reference path trajectories for the agricultural machinery,which can make the machinery operate accurately.In consideration of its working environment,characteristics and agronomic requirements,a strategy of complete coverage path planning for autonomous rice transplanter in the convex polygonal field with small obstacles is studied.Firstly,the conception of precision agriculture and the current status of autonomous navigation in agricultural machinery and path planning methods are given,then the development process and basic principle of GPS navigation are described.Five key technologies of autonomous transplanter base on GPS are described which are GPS technology,intelligent control technology,multi-sensor technology,environment modeling technology and path planning technology.After the definition of the traditional methods and the complete methods of path planning are given,their classification,similarities and distinctions are discussed.According to the agronomic requirements,the trajectories are often rectilinear and parallel.Then five kinds of turning pattern are proposed,which are selected by comparing the minimum turning radius and the working width,and the cost of each turning pattern is calculated respectively in detail.The optimal operating direction is determined to be the direction along the longest edge.To small obstacles in the workregion,the avoidance method based on minimum circumscribed circle is proposed.Finally,the simulation of optimal coverage path planning for transplanter is carried out on a platform based on VC++.