Deep Forestry Drones - revolutionising forestry mapping and analysis with artificial intelligence

Project Information

DFD

Grant agreement ID: 889126

DOI

10.3030/889126

Project closed

EC signature date 5 December 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 30 April 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

DEEP FORESTRY AB
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DFD (Deep Forestry Drones - revolutionising forestry mapping and analysis with artificial intelligence)

Reporting period: 2020-01-01 to 2020-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Forests play a major role in the EU, covering 180 million hectares or 42% of the entire territory. Due to their significance for the economy, the quality of air we breathe, and the preservation of the fragile ecosystems, European and global forests must be managed in a sustainable way. Deep Forestry have created three new forestry digitalization products that will overcome existing data bottlenecks and unlock the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, and autonomous mechanized harvesting, to enable sustainable forestry management on a global scale.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The feasibility assessment has shown that the Deep Forestry’s data acquisition platform demonstrates a strong commercial potential. Our innovation can serve as a key enabling technology for the digitization of forest management practices. Our customer-driven industry research and pilot projects suggest that there is a high demand for our solution, and we can expect various potential revenue streams coming across multiple industries. This creates a lucrative opportunity for Deep Forestry. In this respect, we have validated our business model and the pricing strategy. Moreover, we were able to identify the reference users and partners that are willing to participate in the industrial pilots to be included in the planned EIC Accelerator Project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Deep Forestry’s first product is a robotic drone that flies into the forest, autonomously navigating in-between the trees while quickly scanning and digitally replicating the entire forest ecosystem with centimeter precision. The second product is a handheld device that labels real-world forest objects and transfers their semantic information into digital point-cloud form. This patent pending device seamlessly integrates into traditional fieldwork practices, transforming the worlds forestry fieldworkers into AI labelling specialists. The third product is a powerful AI algorithm that operates in three dimensions (3D). It uses data from both the drone and the handheld device to quickly and cheaply train itself in new forestry-specific classifications. Deep Forestry designed these three products to disrupt the precision forestry market through a symbiotic positive feedback loop that will empower environmental protection and unlock the riches of a digital forestry revolution.

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