Optimum harvesting area of convex and concave polygon field for path planning of robot combine harvester

This paper presents an optimum harvesting area of a convex and concave polygon for the path planning of a robot combine harvester. A convenient optimum harvesting area for a convex and concave polygon is proposed. The notion is that path planning specifically for a robot combine harvester is required to choose the crop field optimum harvesting area; otherwise, crop losses may occur during harvesting of the field. For a safe turning margin of the robot combine harvester, the surrounding crop near the boundary zone is cut twice or thrice by manual operation. However, this surrounding cutting crop is not exactly straight, and sometimes it is curved or meanders. In addition, path planning with a conventional AB point method in order to take a corner position from the global positioning system by visual observation is a time-consuming operation. A curved or meandering crop is not cut and left in the field during harvesting, and the harvesting area is not optimum. Therefore, a suitable N-polygon algorithm and split of convex hull and cross-point method for determining the optimum harvesting area for path planning are proposed, which reduce the crop losses in the field. The results show that this developed algorithm estimates the optimum harvesting area for a convex or concave polygon field and its corner vertices, takes all crop portions, and reduces crop losses. It is also illustrated that the working path calculated based on the corner vertices minimizes the total operational processing time.