Path Deformation Method with Constraints on Normal Curvature for Wheeled Robots in Precision Agriculture Based on Second-Order Cone Programming

Abstract

In precision agriculture, path planning for agricultural robots with complete covering a three-dimensional landscape is an essential task. For robots with front wheels steering the normal curvature of the trajectories should be limited to some value determined by the characteristics of the vehicle. The paper considers a method of deformation of these paths to account for obstacles for trajectories described by homogeneous cubic B-splines. We propose an optimization problem that allows calculating paths with minimizing skips in the coverage. The considered problem is convex and belongs to the class of second-order cone programming, which entails the possibility of its computationally efficient solution. The computational examples are presented.