Farm Topological Map Construction from Road Vector Data for Unmanned Farm Navigation
Yongchao Shan, Weiqiang Fu, Anqi Zhang, Xiaofei An, Yanxin Yin, Zhijun Meng, Lingyi An, Chunjiang ZhaoIn unmanned farms, machinery transfer between fields and access to field entrances are essential prerequisites for autonomous field operations, and both require support from an accurately structured farm-road network. However, existing road data are typically maintained as vector layers and lack the topological relationships and geometric attributes needed for transfer-route and field-entrance planning. This study proposes a method for constructing farm-road topological maps from road and field vector data. The method converts road polygons into a node–edge graph containing centerline geometry, estimates road-segment widths to support the safe passage of agricultural machinery, and establishes bidirectional road–field associations based on field-access nodes. Experiments in three farm areas show that the proposed method achieves a mean symmetric centerline error of 0.094 m; width-estimation mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.032 m and 0.060 m, respectively; and a 100% success rate in 50 random path-planning tasks. The farm-road topological map constructed by this method provides spatial infrastructure for agricultural-machinery path planning and operation scheduling in unmanned farms.