Corner Cases: Headland Coverage Path Planning for Autonomous Driving in Arable Farming

Corner Cases: Headland Coverage Path Planning for Autonomous Driving in Arable Farming

|Authors: Riikka Soitinaho, Timo Oksanen

|Venue: arXiv preprint | Year: 2026

|arXiv: 2609.04103v1

Abstract

This paper presents a new method for headland coverage path planning for arable fields. Several earlier approaches suggest covering the headland with nested polygons and smooth turns, however, covering the field corners entirely requires manoeuvres with reversing. In the new method, the polygon corners are modified to allow a reversing turn. A comparison to two other methods considering gap, overlap, and crossing the field boundary shows an improvement in the coverage result especially in field corners of around 90 degrees, and 240 degrees and above. Applicability of the new method is shown with several examples of real polygonal field maps.

Key Contributions

• This paper presents a new method for headland coverage path planning for arable fields
• Several earlier approaches suggest covering the headland with nested polygons and smooth turns, h…
• In the new method, the polygon corners are modified to allow a reversing turn
• A comparison to two other methods considering gap, overlap, and crossing the field boundary shows…
• Applicability of the new method is shown with several examples of real polygonal field maps

Topics

• reinforcement-learning
• planning

Code & Data

No code repository linked in paper metadata.

BibTeX

@article{Soitinaho2026_260904103v1,
  title     = {Corner Cases: Headland Coverage Path Planning for Autonomous Driving in Arable Farming},
  author    = {Riikka Soitinaho and Timo Oksanen},
  year      = {2026},
  eprint    = {2609.04103v1},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass  = {cs.RO},
  url       = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.04103v1}
}