On a cold but dry February day, the Oxford team gave a demo of their research and the broader activity in DigiForest to UK Forestry Researchers. The demo was carried out in Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England in a mature oak plantation located close to the Wales border.

Attendees included masters students from University of Swansea, researchers from Southampton and scientists from Forestry Research UK. Oxford’s team demonstrated the Anymal robot autonomously exploring a plot of the plantation and their backpack system building 3D maps of each individual tree and extracting their real-time traits before summarising the progress of other partners including the SAHA harvester (ETH and PreFor) and aerial exploration (TUM and NTNU).

In particular we thank Dr. Juan Suarez of Forestry Research UK for arranging and promoting the event which was helpful for promoting DigiForest to the UK forestry data community and making new connections. Thanks also to Tom Wilkinson and Tom Fuller from Oxford’s Public Affairs Directorate for the creation of upcoming media to help promote the project.