MP-STSP: A Multi-Platform Steiner Traveling Salesman Problem Formulation for Precision Agriculture in Orchards

In this work, we propose a global planning strategy specifically designed for precision agriculture settings, where field activities may have different requirements ranging from a full orchard inspection to sparse targeted per-plant interventions. This global planning strategy is formulated as a novel Multi-Platform Steiner Traveling Salesman Problem (MP-STSP) where, in order to guarantee the exploitation of multiple moving platforms and the minimization of the overall operational time, the proposed formulation explicitly takes into account the time required to perform each task. By doing so, the computed itineraries attempt to balance the workload among the deployed platforms. Comparative simulations, inspired by the needs of the EU H2020 Project PANTHEON
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, are provided to numerically demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed planning strategy for an orchard precision agriculture setting.