A hierarchical game approach on real-time navigation scheduling of agricultural harvesters

•An integrated framework for real-time navigation of agricultural harvesters is proposed.•Farmer’s demands with agricultural harvesters and the dispatch system are linked.•Competition between farms is modeled with a non-cooperative game approach.•A hierarchical game approach is developed to solve the formulated game. A navigation scheduling framework for agricultural harvesters (AHs) is proposed, which takes the impacts from both farmer’s demands and dispatch system (DS) into consideration. Farmer’s demands with AHs and the DS are linked in this framework. It benefits farmers and AHs owners by attracting AHs to schedule at rush hours and saving the time of AHs owners with real-time navigation. A hierarchical game approach is proposed based on the formulated framework to effectively navigate AHs to farms that need to harvest (FNHs). And a non-cooperative game is proposed to model the competition between FNHS at the upper level of the hierarchical game. At the lower level, multiple evolutionary games are formulated based on the pricing strategies obtained from the non-cooperative game to evolve AHs’ strategies in choosing FNHs. The simulation results show that the proposed navigation scheduling method is effective in improving both the reliability of the DS and economic profits of AHs owners.