Just six weeks after our first project field trial, the full Digforest consortium convened in Evo, Finland for a week of trials 1-5 May 2023. The site was Evo Forestry school, managed by Häme University of Applied Sciences with several plots close to the main school buildings used.

The trial included aerial experiments from several drones - from TU Munich, NTNU, PreFor and also Hexagon. There were flights over the canopy for large scale aerial mapping as well as vision-only obstacle avoidance for fast under canopy exploration. Hexagon also contributed terrestrial laser scanning of key sites. TUM tested their visual inertial stack. Their goal is to build dense maps for path planning and collision avoidance based on cameras and inertial sensors.

Oxford and ETH tested ANYmal autonomously mapping the forest using lawnmower patterns but at one point lost a robot leg in the soft Finnish bog.

Mobile laser scanning maps were built using Oxford’s backpack scanner as well as by Bonn with a Leica BLK2Go unit. Finally, the biggest robot was for sure the SAHA (Semi Automated Harvester) which had a new sensor payload integrated by ETH and PreFor.

The week served as the first project get-to-gether and a team building exercise. The entire week was organised by the team of PreFor - in particular thanks to Henri Riihimäki and Susanna Kurlin for an excellent event at a beautiful venue.