PolyPoD: An Algorithm for Polyculture Seed Placement

Varun Kamat, Shrey Aeron, Anrui Gu, Harshika Jalan, Simeon Adebola, Ken Goldberg

Abstract: The spatial arrangement of plants in a garden or small farm is especially important for polyculture agriculture to reduce water and pesticide use. We present PolyPoD, a new algorithm for seed placement. Given a polygonal planting area boundary (convex or non-convex) and number and types of seeds, PolyPoD generates the variable radius poisson disk distribution, yielding viable seed placements. Results suggest that PolyPoD outperforms our previous seed placement algorithm with the goal of avoiding over-competition for resources, under-utilization of space, and plant segmentation difficulties. The PolyPoD platform will also offer free access on a website for polyculture farmers worldwide. Source code, documentation, and the website link are available at https://github.com/BerkeleyAutomation/PolyPoD.