Aerial Drone-based Automated Tree Harvesting System for Sustainable Forestry

In Europe, forests make up 43% of the continent's land area, covering around 182 million hectares. European forests absorb approximately 10% of the continent’s total CO2 emissions annually, support over 3.6 million jobs and generate around €640 billion annually through forest-based industries. Forests are most productive if and when trees grow in optimal conditions. Creating such conditions means removing trees that are cluttered, damaged, sick or altogether alien to a forest. This is achieved through forest thinning, an operation that is vital to maintain forest health and productivity and prevent wildfires. Yet today, thinning relies on inefficient old technology. 15-30 t machines cut through the forest, severely damaging the forest floor and ecosystem, emitting a total of 10M t of CO2 by burning diesel, and felling healthy trees to make logging roads (affecting ~20% of the forest ecosystem).AirForestry is reinventing forestry by enabling the fossil-free thinning of trees from the air. Our solution is a novel combination of a drone and a lightweight wood harvesting tool for grabbing, delimbing and cutting selected trees. We use an electric multi-copter with AI-based visual navigation to locate specific trees (sick, alien, wildfire-vulnerable), cut them and deliver timber to the roadside.Our innovation will disrupt the tree-thinning market by offering an automated, non-invasive, and sustainable alternative to harmful state-of-the-art methods. Frequent and gentle thinning that we enable allows healthier forests to generate almost 3X commercial value/ha, store ~90 t more CO2/ha, preserve biodiversity and remain beautiful for our children.