Farming operations efficiency is a crucial factor that determines the overall\noperational cost in agricultural production systems. Improved efficiency can be achieved by\nimplementing advanced planning methods for the execution of field operations dealing,\nespecially with the routing and area coverage optimisation aspects. Recently, a new type of field\narea coverage patterns, the B-patterns, has been introduced. B-patterns are the result of a\ncombinatorial optimisation process that minimizes operational criterions such as, the operational\ntime, non-working travelled distance, fuel consumption etc. In this paper an algorithmic\napproach for the generation of B-patterns based on ant colony optimisation is presented. Ant\ncolony optimization metaheuristic was chosen for the solution of the graph optimisation problem\ninherent in the generation of B-patterns. Experimental results on two selected fields were\npresented for the demonstration of the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Based on the\nresults, it was shown that it is feasible to use ant colony optimization for the generation of\noptimal routes for field area coverage while tests made on the resulting routes indicated that they\ncan be followed by any farm machine equipped with auto-steering and navigation systems.
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