Development of an autonomous robotic complex in reforestation and afforestation

The purpose of the study is to automate the process of creating forest cultures. The object of the research is the design and technical solution of an autonomous reforestation robot for planting seedlings of coniferous forest crops (pine, spruce). Land degradation and desertification is a significant problem for ensuring food security in the Russian Federation. More than 100 million hectares of agricultural land are at risk of loss of fertility due to large-scale degradation and desertification. The lack of qualified personnel and low-productivity manual labor do not allow for the most effective use of the tight deadlines for reforestation work. At present, there is an urgent need for advanced developments in the field of technical and economic aspects of forest culture. All known serial models of reforestation machines use the manual labor of the operator to feed seedlings to the working bodies of the device for further planting in the ground in the direction of the machine. In this regard, the productivity of these complexes directly depends on and is limited by the personal skills of the operator. The use of an autonomous unmanned robot, such as the Svyatobor complex being developed, will eliminate the human factor, standardize the quality of planting seedlings, and use the terms of reforestation and forest management work as efficiently as possible. Along with the issue of standardizing the quality of planting seedlings, significant savings in time and resources are achieved by eliminating the need for soil preparation due to the introduction of machine vision, the use of a robot track platform and a special plow that performs opening of the fertile layer directly at the place of planting each seedling. The article describes the concept of the Svyatobor complex, including the main elements and stages of its preparation for work. The results of the development of careful capture of seedlings of coniferous forest-forming species are presented.

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