Planterbot (Planting Robot)

Abstract

New Zealand government decided to plant 1 billion trees beyond reforestation in ten years. The labour shortage has already been a significant problem for employers, especially in the forestry industry since it needs specific knowledge and the working environment is challenging. Therefore, the already stretched system needs new solutions to handle the challenge. The study introduces the cost and benefits of applying planting robots (planterbots). Four generations of planterbots were considered from a remote-controlled tractor to autonomous solar-powered small units can process remote sensing information and cooperate on the field. Discrete event simulation (DES) was applied to analyse the movements in the planting area. Based on the DES information, an economic analysis was developed to calculate the costs and benefits. Sensitivity analysis was used to define the critical factors and identify the important constraints (speed, fuel consumption, cost/unit, etc.) to be competitive with the current manual labour. The identified constraints are the essential inputs for the initial machinery design. The presentation includes the problem definition, the description of the planned planterbot generations and the thoughts behind the machinery, the method of analysis, and the results.