ForestTECH News Issue 32

Welcome to the latest issue of Foresttech.News.

This is the first issue for 2020. Remember – this is your newsletter so please send us through any links, research findings, trial results, information on new equipment or technology, leads… and we’ll do our best using this platform to get the details out to your colleagues around the region.

At ForestTECH 2019, US-based DroneSeed come down to highlight how planting trees by drones was up to six times faster than manual plantings. As well as DroneSeed, there are a number of startups innovating in this space including the UK company, Dedra, which has lofty goals of planting 500 billion trees by 2060 using drones.

Also linked to the ForestTECH 2019 event is the trial undertaken by Scion using the Emesent Hovermap sensor. The trial enabled a drone to fly independently of the operator – but this time – it wasn’t above but underneath the forest canopy. It was one of the first autonomous drone flights in this part of the world under a forest canopy. More details are contained in the trial report that we’ve included in this issue.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show run in early January, the drone industry’s leading manufacturer, DJI, also introduced for the first time two new sensors along with a new method of lidar scanning. They’re claiming it’s going to deliver “better sensing performance at a fraction of the cost” of traditional lidar units.

In tech start-ups, we also cover a new partnership that’s just been set up between the autonomous drone-based transportation start-up, Volocopter and John Deere. This potentially has real application to future forestry operations.

Check out all the articles below and enjoy this month’s issue.