Efforts related to minimizing the environmental burden caused by agricultural activities and increasing economic efficiency are key contemporary drivers in the precision agriculture domain. Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) techniques are being applied against soil compaction creation, using the on-line optimization of trajectory planning for soil-sensitive field operations. The research presented in this paper aims at a proof-of-concept solution with respect to optimizing farm machinery trajectories in order to minimize the environmental burden and increase economic efficiency. As such, it further advances existing CTF solutions by including (1) efficient plot divisions in 3D, (2) the optimization of entry and exit points of both plot and plot segments, (3) the employment of more machines in parallel and (4) obstacles in a farm machinery trajectory. The developed algorithm is expressed in terms of unified modeling language (UML) activity diagrams as well as pseudo-code. Results were visualized in 2D and 3D to demonstrate terrain impact. Verifications were conducted at a fully operational commercial farm (Rostěnice, the Czech Republic) against second-by-second sensor measurements of real farm machinery trajectories.

Agricultural Engineering Laboratory Faculty of Agriculture Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 54124 Thessaloniki Greece

Department of Agrosystems and Bioclimatology Faculty of Agronomy Mendel University 613 00 Brno Czech Republic

Department of Geography Faculty of Science Masaryk University 611 37 Brno Czech Republic

Laboratory of Remote Sensing Spectroscopy and GIS Faculty of Agriculture Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 54124 Thessaloniki Greece

Precision Soil and Crop Engineering Faculty of Bioscience Engineering Ghent University 9000 Gent Belgium

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