Design of a wildlife avoidance planning system for autonomous harvesting operations

Harvesting and mowing operations are among
the main potential stressors affecting wildlife within
agricultural landscapes, leading to large animal losses. A
number of studies have been conducted on harvesting
practices to address the problem of wildlife mortality,
providing a number of management actions or field area
coverage strategies. Nevertheless, these are general rules
limited to simple-shaped fields, and which are not
applicable to more complex operational situations. The
objectives of the present study were to design a system
capable of deriving a wildlife avoidance driving pattern
for any field shape complexity and field boundary
conditions (in terms of escape and non-escape areas) and
applicable to different animal behaviours. The assumed
animal escape reactions are the result of the
parameterization of a series of developed behavioural
functions. This parameterization will be able to adapt any
knowledge that is or might become available as a result of
dedicated future experiments on animal behaviour for
different species or different animal ages.