Motion Planning for an Autonomous Compactor in a Waste Landfill Site

: This paper describes the algorithms and detailed path-planning methodologies developed to enable autonomous spreading and compaction processes in a waste landfilling operation. A given landfill site is spatially decomposed into cells using a recursive spatial decomposition technique. The cell size is determined using a probabilistic model for waste generation. Variation in the amount of waste generated on a given day is handled by a further spatial decomposition of a cell into monominoes. The recursive spatial decomposition processes of a landfill site into cells and each cell into monominoes are accomplished by employing a variant of quadtree data structure. A three-dimensional path plan for an autonomous compactor that considers a variable working gradient in the range of 3:1 to 2:1 is generated for a pair of monominoes. Automatic location of the working place for a compactor is accomplished by a recursive traversal of the quadtree structure. The algorithms have been implemented using a computer-graphic functional interface standard with C-program binding.