The world has been affected by an alarming number of wildfires every year, ravaging millions of hectares of forestry areas and resulting in an unacceptable amount of human losses. The SafeForest project deals with developing an advanced robotic system for the prevention of wildland and wildland-urban interface (WWUI) fires. Vegetation cleaning in corridors along high voltage electric lines will be central to avoiding forest fires that recently led to massive destruction in countries like the USA and Portugal.
Keywords: Forestryrobotics · Sustainableforestmanagement · Wildfireprevention
The project intends to drastically reduce the costs associated with the maintenance of private or public forests, namely near houses, as well as the protection of wide corridors used as fuel breaks and corridors near critical infrastructures (roads, railways, telecommunication lines, and antennas, electric utility lines) to control and reduce the propagation of large forest fires.
SafeForest will develop an advanced monitoring and robotic system to improve the maintenance of forests and contribute to reducing the wildfire hazard potential while conserving natural resources and creating ecosystems that are resilient to climate change.
The main goal of the project is to develop semi-autonomous mobile platforms that can execute a land clearing mission, based on a preliminary mapping of the area carried out with the support of advanced drone terrain/vegetation monitoring, and manage to remove the redundant vegetation to achieve the necessary fuel breaks cleaning. This objective will be achieved by integrating different sensors on a semi-autonomous all-terrain platform for land clearing in fuel breaks and in WWUI areas, able to perform in most types of terrains.
Promoter:
INGENIARIUS – Micael Santos Couceiro
Industrial Co-Promoter:
SILVAPOR – José Gameiro
Academic Co-promoters:
ISR Coimbra – Anibal Traça de Almeida
Associação para o Desenvolvimento da Aerodinâmica Industrial (ADAI) – Domingos Xavier Viegas
CMU:
Robotics Institute – George Kantor
