From helping us sort waste to monitoring endangered species, robots have been increasingly supporting our efforts to safeguard a better future for our environment. Now, some of them are looking to help us combat climate change by accelerating our reforestation efforts.
An Estonian company, called Milrem Robotics, has developed a robot forester that can plant and nurture young trees. The tree-planting robot can carry up to 300 saplings and plant a hectare of forest in less than six hours.
Although the mechanic foresters were initially designed to work on commercial forests, the creators are now looking to support reforestation efforts around the world, with tree planting being one of our most efficient nature-based solutions to capturing CO2 emissions.
The machines are equipped with Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) — which uses laser pulses to build a 3D image of the robots’ surroundings — and GPS (global positioning) to navigate precisely across the terrain.
The robot logs the position of each sapling in a database as it is planted, meaning that a specialized brushcutter robot can then cut back competing growth without harming the young trees.
As conservationists say we need to plant one trillion trees to help slow the advent of climate change, robots like those developed by Milrem Robotics could really speed up reforestation around the world.
