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Doctoral thesis, 2022

Roadmap for teleoperation and automation of forwarding

Lundbäck, Mikael

Abstract

Annually, about two billion m3 of industrial roundwood is harvested worldwide. For a mature forest industry like the Swedish, the next technological development leaps regarding harvest operations are likely to involve increased level of tele-operation and automation. The overall aim of this thesis was to simulate and evaluate combinations of teleoperation and automation of forwarding within the cut-to-length (CTL) harvesting method, and to discuss their potential application internationally. The economic potential of different configurations of a novel concept called semiautomated tele-extraction or just tele-extraction was investigated. To evaluate the potential application of such a concept in other countries, a worldwide mapping of harvesting methods and reasons behind differences, as well as a global analysis of the slope of forest land was done. The overall result showed that there is potential for between 6% and 19% cost reduction in Swedish CTL forwarding if teleextraction is applied. Automation of more time consuming work elements, such as loading, gave larger potential than automation of driving since more operator time was deliberated. The worldwide share of fully mechanized CTL harvesting was estimated to 37% and some of its drivers include high diesel price, gross domestic product and low share of steep terrain. About 80% of global forest land had slope less than 15°, with Africa, Russia, and the Amazon rainforest especially flat. Furthermore, there is potential for implementation of tele-extraction in at least ten countries with a high share of mechanized CTL harvesting, the potential annual volume is roughly between 100 and 150 million m3.

Keywords

harvesting systems; global slope; future development; remote control; CTL

Published in

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae Sueciae
2022, number: 2022:29
ISBN: 978-91-7760-933-9, eISBN: 978-91-7760-934-6
Publisher: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

    Sustainable Development Goals

    SDG15 Life on land
    SDG9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Agricultural Science
    Geophysics
    Economics

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/116658