Capacitated Agriculture Fleet Vehicle Routing with Implements and Limited Autonomy: A Model and a Two-Phase Solution Approach
Aitor López Sánchez, Marin Lujak, Frédéric Semet, Holger Billhardt
Abstract
In this paper, we study the vehicle routing problem (VRP) for a fleet of cooperative autonomous agricultural robots (agribots) equipped with detachable implements, with the goal of efficiently and sustainably completing agricultural tasks in precision crop farming. State of the art in the area of agribot fleet routing with detachable implements is lacking. Consequently, we propose the Capacitated Agriculture Fleet Vehicle Routing Problem with Implements and Limited Autonomy (CAFVRPILA), designed to optimize the agribot fleet's routes across a set of given agricultural tasks while considering implement capacities, agribot-implement compatibilities, and agribots' limited battery autonomies. A heuristic two-phase decomposition approach is proposed for this problem. Simulation experiments show that minimizing travel distances and costs with CAFVRPILA enhances sustainable farming while maximizing productivity and resource use. The results also demonstrate that synchronizing multiple operations improves efficiency, particularly in larger fleets.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2025_capacitatedagric,
title = {Capacitated Agriculture Fleet Vehicle Routing with Implements and Limited Autonomy: A Model and a Two-Phase Solution Approach},
author = {Aitor López Sánchez and Marin Lujak and Frédéric Semet and Holger Billhardt},
booktitle = {ICRA 2025},
year = {2025}
}