Project description
Robots and AI for forest monitoring
Forests are essential for combatting climate change and maintaining our planet, with forestry operators and organisations monitoring forests, assisting their growth, limber output and maintenance. Unfortunately, monitoring large expanses of forest can be difficult and inaccurate which is dangerous for properly maintaining a forest's health. The EU-funded DIGIFOREST project introduces an innovative solution, improved forest monitoring and data management using robots and artificial intelligence. By utilising several different robots to collect 3D spatial data on forests and individual trees followed by AI documenting and AI representing it, it offers forestry operators and policymakers an unparalleled tool.
Objective
What if we could create a revolution in spatial data acquisition, organization and analysis and give forestry operators and enterprises up-to-date, tangible information about the status of their forests down to the individual tree? We believe this would improve their oversight by allowing more accurate growth modelling of forest stands and precise predictions of timber yields. It would remove the uncertainty of when thinning operations are needed or where there are trees which are ready for harvest. It could also enable operators to automatically plan where their staff or equipment should be deployed. With capable (semi-)autonomous harvesting, operators eventually automating the full process.
It could also better quantify a forest's carbon sequestration - with low uncertainty per-tree carbon estimates. Precise measures of crown volume and tree diameters would improve the granularity of carbon credit schemes. This could inform national governments and policy makers when deciding policy on initiatives such as carbon offsets and carbon farming.
In DIGIFOREST we propose to create such an ecosystem by developing a team of heterogeneous robots to collect and update this raw 3D spatial representations, building large scale forest maps and feeding them to machine learning and spatial AI to semantically segment and label the trees and also the terrain. Our robot team will be diverse: we will use both rugged field robots as well as more experimental vehicles. Most ambitious of all is the intention to (semi-)automate a lightweight harvester for sustainable selective logging.
Progress in this project will be demonstrated with an ambitious series of field trials. With the clear engagement of forestry and industrial companies, commercial pathways are readily available.
A 1:15 video summarizing the overall project ambitions and consortium can be viewed here:
https://tinyurl.com/digiforest(opens in new window)
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences political sciences political transitions revolutions
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering robotics
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries forestry
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.4 - Digital, Industry and Space
MAIN PROGRAMME
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HORIZON.2.4.5 - Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL4-2021-DIGITAL-EMERGING-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
53113 Bonn
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.