Greenhouse layout optimization enhances safe and rapid robot navigation

Protected systems such as greenhouses provides opportunities such as increasing production and ease in environmental regulation required for optimal plant growth. However, problems such as poor ventilation in greenhouses can be fatal to the human workforce. This has led to research to develop robots for hazardous tasks. It is difficult to predict at which point a robot will need to return to the start point; to offload or refill for transportation and spraying schedules respectively or charge the battery for all category of robots. It will be commercially constraining to manufacture robots for every greenhouse specification. this study, greenhouse layout optimization problem was formulated to find optimal points on each bed to create an access path that would enable reduction in travel time from any point in the greenhouse to the base point. The optimization problem was solved using Differential Evolution (DE), an Evolutionary Algorithm. The system considers - a) required space for inter-bed and rotary robot navigation b) standard bed specification, c) area of the greenhouse, d) base point for robot starting and termination. The above parameters can be changed to user preference.