FutureWood - Sustainable Autonomous Forestry Logistics

The forest industry is an important economic factor in Austria, but of course also in Europe and in other regions of the world. Due to the large ranges of forest harvesting, modern machines come to use for harvesting processes, wood selection and treatment as well as transportation. The boundary conditions are often very difficult, as the forests are situated in distanced mountain and valley areas. Today, the machines are driven by internal combustion engines with diesel as a fuel, and are manually operated. This has two weaknesses: On the one hand, the combustion of diesel fuel produces large amount of exhaust emissions, and the manual operation is risky for workers involved. Unfortunately, serious accidents happen frequently, especially during forestry work, which are largely due to human errors and misjudgments. In addition, diesel-powered trucks are used to transport the wood, which, at almost 36 million kilometers per year in Austria alone, results in CO2 emissions of ca. 30.000 tons per year. Based on the above-mentioned requirements, the consortium started the idea to investigate sustainable and automated forest harvesting and transportation processes. Project goals are divided into two main fields: (1) the reduction of CO2 emissions by electrification and the use of local electric energy sources and (2) autonomous forest transportation.