Collaborative orchard pesticide spraying routing problem with multi-vehicles supported multi-UAVs

Abstract

The application of UAVs in orchard management presents a substantial opportunity to enhance efficiency and promote environmentally friendly agricultural production. While individual UAVs encounter limitations, such as endurance constraints, these challenges can be mitigated through collaborative efforts involving multiple vehicles and UAVs. This study addresses the issue of multi-UAV cooperative orchard path planning with multiple vehicles by formulating a mathematical optimization model aimed at minimizing the maximum UAV operation time. In the proposed model, the vehicle solely provides batteries and supplies to the UAV. To efficiently solve this model, we propose an improved Simulated Annealing-Lin Kernighan Helsgaun (SA-LKH) algorithm. The proposed algorithm utilizes the K-means and convex hull algorithm to generate the initial solution. Subsequently, the paths of each group of UAVs and vehicles are optimized based on the LKH algorithm. Additionally, we construct a directed perturbation operator that perturbs the maximum and minimum time-consuming paths to achieve fast convergence of the algorithm. The results from four different cases demonstrate that, compared to the general variable neighborhood search algorithm, the improved Ant Colony Algorithm and Improved Genetic Algorithm, the proposed algorithm has demonstrated an average improvement in solution quality of 3.41%, 5.72% and 9.67%, respectively. The proposed method effectively enhances the solution quality, which can provide valuable insights into green cleaning management of orchards.