DigiForest: Digital Analytics and Robotics for Sustainable Forestry

arXiv:2604.14652v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Covering one third of Earth's land surface, forests are vital to global biodiversity, climate regulation, and human well-being. In Europe, forests and woodlands reach approximately 40% of land area, and the forestry sector is central to achieving the EU's climate neutrality and biodiversity goals; these emphasize sustainable forest management, increased use of long-lived wood products, and resilient forest ecosystems. To meet these goals and properly address their inherent challenges, current practices require further innovation. This chapter introduces DigiForest, a novel, large-scale precision forestry approach leveraging digital technologies and autonomous robotics. DigiForest is structured around four main components: (1) autonomous, heterogeneous mobile robots (aerial, legged, and marsupial) for tree-level data collection; (2) automated extraction of tree traits to build forest inventories; (3) a Decision Support System (DSS) for forecasting forest growth and supporting decision-making; and (4) low-impact selective logging using purpose-built autonomous harvesters. These technologies have been extensively validated in real-world conditions in several locations, including forests in Finland, the UK, and Switzerland.

Related

• Online Navigation Planning for Long-term Autonomous Operation of Underwater Gliders
• 'Take Me Home, Wi-Fi Drone': A Drone-based Wireless System for Wilderness Search and Rescue
• Vision-and-Language Navigation for UAVs: Progress, Challenges, and a Research Roadmap
• Towards Robust Optimization-Based Autonomous Dynamic Soaring with a Fixed-Wing UAV

Source: arXiv cs.RO | 2026-04-17