The E-Forest project aims to introduce a disruptive solution that will ensure the necessary activities for more effective forest management, mitigating the consequences of an aging population in rural areas. On the other hand, it will allow forestry operators to be exempted from monotonous, physically demanding and dangerous activities, seeking to respond to various challenges within the scope of biomass management and fire prevention/fighting. The proposed E-Forest solution focuses on the development of a mobile, all-terrain robot platform, completely electric and capable of carrying out multiple forestry tasks autonomously. Each vehicle will be built in a modular way, enabling the transport of specific tools and loads to perform different tasks, namely tools necessary for biomass management, creation and maintenance of fire lines, firefighting, forest surveillance, transport, search and rescue, and investigation activities. Additionally, this vehicle must be capable of automatically and autonomously docking with a local charging platform, equipped with an energy storage system, which will supply electrical energy generated from renewable sources (solar, wind, hydro and biomass). and will allow changing the battery pack of robotic platforms. The vehicle will be able to operate and circulate autonomously in unstructured forest environments, through the implementation of dynamic navigation methods, supported by data collected, in real time, by sensors integrated into the platform. The vehicle will have previously loaded detailed maps of the terrain and the missions it will have to perform, but it will also have the capacity to update the defined nominal path, with the aim of avoiding static and dynamic obstacles (trees, rocks, animals or people), using customized solutions. hoc and SLAM navigation algorithms.
The planned research and development activities are of high interest for the entire national territory, but also for other regions of Europe, as well as for the American, Australian and African markets. The market dedicated to forest management and all activities linked to the forest and the exploitation of its resources reveals an estimated value of 670 million euros in Portugal, and 3 billion euros when analyzed at a global level, corresponding to 1.5% of the World GDP.
