Research on the Lowest Energy Consumption Path Planning of Unmanned Plant Protection Machines in Orchard Environments

This study addresses the path planning problem of unmanned plant protection machines in orchard environments and proposes an improved Dijkstra algorithm based on energy consumption optimization. Firstly, an energy consumption model for the orchard environment is established, comprehensively considering the impacts of factors such as travel distance, terrain slope, ground resistance, and load on energy consumption. Then, taking energy consumption as the optimization objective of path planning, the traditional Dijkstra algorithm is improved to generate the path with the lowest energy consumption. The experimental results show that, compared with the traditional shortest path planning method, the improved algorithm can effectively reduce energy consumption. Specifically, when the path length increases by $11 \%$, the energy consumption is reduced by $27.17 \%$. The research indicates that this method can significantly enhance the endurance of unmanned plant protection machines, improve operation efficiency, and provide support for the development of intelligent agriculture.