Prevent traversals between adjacent passes from turning back into the field when the headlands do not allow for a lightbulb turn.
Problem
Traversals between adjacent passes keep turning back into the field.
Why does this happen?
The headlands are too small to fit in the lightbulb turn so path-planner uses a less optimal traversal that folds back into the field interior.
Solution
Use "disable_lightbulbs: true" in the Advanced Parameters section of mission planner.
How does this help?
Path planner’s solver uses the most direct dubins path without updating it according to the “traversal type”. We do this because it’s a faster computation, and every combination of pass to other passes has to be computed before a solution can be found.
That means that the fast computation traversal used for solving is not being pulled back into the boundary and headlands. Only after the path planner’s solver runs and the order of passes is determined, then the actual traversals according to traversal type are generated.
The disable_lightbulbs parameter actually removes the possibility of the lightbulb dubins paths from being an option even for the fast computation before path planner’s solver runs. This means that all of the passes that are folding back into the field will have a more expensive cost associated with them when a solution is generated, which makes it more likely that the order of passes will be modified so that those are minimized.
Why shouldn’t I always disable lightbulb turns?
You shouldn’t always use disable_lightbulbs because it will prevent lightbulbs from being generated in the final result as well. When you have enough headland room, by disabling lightbulbs, if there ever is a connection between adjacent passes, you are forcing it to turn into the field interior where it otherwise would've done a lightbulb in the headland. This option should only ever be used when there's not enough headland room to allow the lightbulb turn.