Infield path planning for autonomous unloading vehicles

Abstract

In agricultural harvesting processes, the infield logistics of transporting the crop from the harvesters' tanks to a street transporter at the field border with an unloading vehicle is challenging. The harvesters have to be unloaded while driving and in time to prevent the loss of expensive process time. The path planning for the unloading vehicle has to consider the unharvested area as a dynamic obstacle and cope with additional constraints like the harvester's kinematics, dynamics and its unloading direction. We present an approach for infield path planning for autonomous unloading vehicles that tackles these problems.