**5. Conclusions**

It can be concluded that a vehicle with neighborhood collection capabilities and added carrying capacity can significantly reduce the travelled distance for bale collection operations (the benchmark model even gives an underestimation in this study). To generate short paths, the optimization approach is superior compared to the nearest neighbor approach and including the benchmark collection order in the initial population for the genetic algorithm improves the convergence compared to random initialization. Hence, implementing the optimization path planning approach, neighborhood collection capabilities, and adding a carrying capacity will have a significant effect on the farmers' economic and environmental sustainability. By reducing the working distance through optimized path planning implies less fuel consumption and more cost effectiveness. Although the primary focus in this study was on bale collection operation, it is plausible that the same approach is applicable in similar activities both within agriculture and beyond, for example, in forestry.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, S.L., T.L. and M.K.; Methodology, S.L., T.L. and M.K.; Software, S.L.; Validation, S.L.; Formal analysis, S.L.; Investigation, S.L.; Resources, S.L., J.W.; Data curation, S.L.; Writing—original draft, S.L.; Writing—review & editing, S.L. and M.K.; Visualization, S.L.; Supervision, T.L., M.K. and J.W.; Project administration, M.K.; Funding acquisition, M.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by The Royal Swedish Agricultural Academy (SLO-foundation) and the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA) as part of the project Automation for Autonomous Terrain Mobility (AUTO2).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
