SCA is participating in a comprehensive project to develop autonomous forestry machines. The goal is to make things easier for operators and ultimately to be able to control forwarders from an office.

機械及設備

SCA to develop autonomous forestry machines

SCA is participating in a comprehensive project to develop autonomous forestry machines. The goal is to make things easier for operators and ultimately to be able to control forwarders from an office, as the company says in the press release received by Lesprom Network.

The forest industry is now entering into the development of automated work tasks. With the Auto2 project, the forest industry wants to use the technology to develop autonomous forwarders – the machines that carry the harvested timber to the forest road.
Auto2 will begin by focusing on the machines themselves, giving them the capability to plan their driving, move through the terrain and make sure that there is a safety zone around the machine so that no one is injured.

The project is led by Skogforsk (Forestry Research Institute of Sweden) and when the sensor controls and security systems are ready, the next step is the possibility of using remote control. In the future, it may be possible to control machines from the cabin or the office. There are many advantages to such a scenario, claims Magnus.

The project will extend over three years, and Vinnova and the forest industry together have financed the project with SEK 20 million ($2.2 million). Several companies and universities are also participating in the project.