Eight Swedish forestry companies: Södra, Sveaskog, SCA, Holmen, Norra Skog, Mellanskog, Stora Enso and BillerudKorsnäs, as well as the forest machinery manufacturer Komatsu Forest, have jointly developed a new forest machine for low-impact forestry. With its innovative technology, the machine – called Centipede – is designed to ensure the most sustainable possible management of forests for both the environment and people. The machine is currently being test driven and the results are promising.
The machine is built to reduce the risk of ground damage, to increase transport speed and to reduce whole-body vibrations for the operator. The machine has a newly developed forestry track system, with a large support surface to minimize ground impact. It also has a fully suspended chassis to handle uneven ground conditions, enabling the speed of the machine to be increased significantly without the corresponding increase in vibrations.
With this newly developed technology, Centipede can be driven both on sites that are normally regarded as winter sites and on sites that are significantly impacted by precipitation. In addition to being able to satisfy timber supply throughout the year and thus provide better prerequisites for profitable harvesting operations, Centipede has a number of characteristics that will directly increase production.
As a result of its innovative design, Centipede can move around the terrain significantly faster and can carry a larger load than the Komatsu 855, which was used as the benchmark. Both of these characteristics create conditions for significant increases in productivity. In addition, Centipede has demonstrated in simulations that fuel consumption is reduced by up to 15 percent in soft terrain, which is also positive for both the environment and profitability.
An extensive preliminary study was implemented and a new machine concept was developed during the project. The machine has been thoroughly evaluated through simulations and test drives. The comprehensive testing will continue in spring 2022 and decisions will thereafter be made about the project’s continuation.
