Scientists from Polish universities and research institutes, together with engineers from the State Forests, have developed an automatic robot for planting forest crops and afforesting recultivated and former agricultural areas. The device is capable of planting up to 7 forest tree seedlings with a covered root system in 1 minute.

The project was carried out with funds from the State Forest Research and Development Fund, and scientists and engineers from the University of Agriculture in Kraków, the Łukasiewicz – Poznań Technological Institute, AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków and the Forest Technology Centre in Jarocin were responsible for its implementation.

“Manual work in forestry, including planting, is arduous and the energy consumption of working people is very high. It is monotonous work. The monotony and the high percentage of static stress during the work make it increasingly difficult to find workers for that job. Fatigue is also the cause of planned and hidden work breaks. Replacing human labour with automated machine work will increase productivity in reforestation and improve the quality of this work”, said Prof. Paweł Tylek of the Agricultural University of Kraków, who led the project.

The mobile robot, named ‘RoboFoR’ by its creators, consists of several cooperating teams. Everything is automatically supervised and controlled with a satellite navigation module supporting the selection of the planting site. The robot plants the seedlings at the correct spot and once placed in the soil, the seedling together with its root surrounding is pressed down using special wheels.

The project ‘RoboFoR’ took three years to be completed in autumn 2022.

Adrian Andrzejewski