Robots help us in many ways-from assembly lines to looking after the elderly. Now they're turning their attention to coping with climate change by helping to plant trees.
Milrem Robotics, an Estonian company, has developed an autonomous robot forester. The new robot forester can plant a hectare of forest in less than six hours. The robotic planters are equipped with Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) which uses laser pulses to build up three-dimensional image of the robots' surroundings and global positioning (GPS) to navigate precisely. The position of each sapling is recorded in a database as it is planted, which means that a specialized brush cutter version of the robot forester can reduce competitive growth without harming the young trees.
The robot forester is designed for working in commercial forests and it could used to restore natural forests, too. Deforestation (滥伐) contributes 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Conservationists say, "We lose 10 million hectares of trees every year to agriculture and logging and we need to plant trillion trees to reverse forest cover loss to help slow down climate change." A mature tree can capture an average of 0.62 metric tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime-equivalent to the carbon emissions from driving a car 2,400 kilometres. Tree planting is just one of a range of measures needed to fight climate change and scientists say it's important to plant the right trees in the right place for it to be effective.
These robotic planters are just one of the many new solutions beginning to surface in time for the decade of delivery on climate change. We can do a lot to help in our daily life.