Mier Gonzalo, Vélez Sergio, Valente João, de Bruin Sytze
Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, 6708 PB The Netherlands.
JRU Drone Technology, Department of Architectural Constructions and I.C.T., University of Burgos, Burgos, 09001 Spain.
Precis Agric. 2025;26(4):57. doi: 10.1007/s11119-025-10250-4. Epub 2025 Jun 3.
Soil compaction caused by heavy agricultural machinery poses a significant challenge to sustainable farming by degrading soil health, reducing crop productivity, and disrupting environmental dynamics. Field traffic optimization can help abate compaction, yet conventional algorithms have mostly focused on minimizing route length while overlooking soil compaction dynamics in their cost function. This study introduces Soil2Cover, an approach that combines controlled traffic farming principles with the SoilFlex model to minimize soil compaction by optimizing machinery paths. Soil2Cover prioritizes the frequency of machinery passes over specific areas, while integrating soil mechanical properties to quantify compaction impacts. Results from tests on 1000 fields demonstrate that our approach achieves a reduction in route length of up to 4-6% while reducing the soil compaction on headlands by up to 30% in both single-crop and intercropping scenarios. The optimized routes improve crop yields whilst reducing operational costs, lowering fuel consumption and decreasing the overall environmental footprint of agricultural production. The implementation code will be released with the third version of Fields2Cover, an open-source library for the coverage path planning problem in agricultural settings.
重型农业机械造成的土壤压实对可持续农业构成了重大挑战，它会破坏土壤健康、降低作物产量并扰乱环境动态。田间交通优化有助于减轻土壤压实，但传统算法大多专注于最小化路线长度，而在其成本函数中忽略了土壤压实动态。本研究引入了Soil2Cover，一种将可控交通耕作原理与SoilFlex模型相结合的方法，通过优化机械路径来最小化土壤压实。Soil2Cover优先考虑机械在特定区域的通行频率，同时整合土壤力学特性以量化压实影响。对1000个田地的测试结果表明，我们的方法在单作和间作场景中，可将路线长度减少多达4-6%，同时将地头的土壤压实减少多达30%。优化后的路线提高了作物产量，同时降低了运营成本，减少了燃料消耗并降低了农业生产的整体环境足迹。实现代码将随Fields2Cover的第三个版本发布，Fields2Cover是一个用于农业环境中覆盖路径规划问题的开源库。
