It has been organised by the Southern Wood Council to provide local operators with an insight into where technology was heading internationally and locally, and the opportunities for using remote-controlled and autonomous machinery.
Forest product industry representatives from throughout the lower South Island have been invited to the seminar on March 14.
Advancements in robotics and automation for forestry companies — everything from planting, silviculture, wood harvesting, extracting the wood from the forest site and transporting logs to the port or processing plant — were moving at a fast pace, SWC chairman Grant Dodson said.
Prof Rien Visser, from the School of Forestry at the University of Canterbury, would present his findings from research undertaken for the Australian forest products sector late last year. It had looked at remote control, tele-operation and automation of forest operations, both inside and outside the forestry industry.
"There are some clear near-future opportunities, including operating extraction machines such as skidders and forwarders without a person in the cab. This will not only increase efficiency, but allow good operators to work on more complex machines and provide a unique opportunity for new equipment design," Prof Visser said.
Other recent research suggested that by 2019, 35% of leading businesses would be exploring the use of robots to automate operations.
Forestry was no different and the switch was already under way. New Zealand forestry contractors, in conjunction with local engineering companies had led the charge, Mr Dodson said. New designs and operations, including vision systems for remote operation of equipment, had been introduced to extract wood safely off steeper slopes.
More recently, tele-operation of wood extraction had been successfully trialled in which the operator was sitting away from the felling and log extraction operations.
Instead, they were sitting in an operator’s cabin on or off site, with live video and audio feedback from the machine being transmitted to them. The console, with joysticks and pedals, was a replica of the layout in the felling machine.
In addition to improving worker safety, remote controlled felling was changing the way wood harvesting was undertaken on steeper terrain, he said.
Rapid advances were also being made in loading and transporting wood. Virtual reality goggles had been introduced to enable operators to operate log loading cranes remotely from the relative safety of the truck cab.
Forest safety, improving productivity and getting workers off the felling site had been a major push for forestry managers, forest owners, logging contractors and equipment suppliers, Mr Dodson said.
Another major driver of increased mechanisation was the shortage of skilled machine operators that many forestry companies are now facing. The ultimate goal of the industry was to have "no worker on the slope, or no hand on the chainsaw", Mr Dodson said.
