The eucalyptus endeavour

Severe labour shortages combined with increasing demand for paper and pulp products are forcing the industry to look for more technology driven solutions.

Anticipating these continuing challenges, paper and pulp leaders in Brazil approached one of the world’s leading manufacturers of forestry equipment, Komatsu Forest, for help mechanising the planting of seedlings on a large scale.

Komatsu Forest invited Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division’s agriculture team based in Brazil, an established brand in the agricultural sector for satellite-based positioning and auto-steering of tractors, and Bracke Forest AB, a Swedish planting equipment company (later acquired by Komatsu), developer of planting heads, to participate in a pioneering project to make tree planting semi-autonomous.

Today, leading paper and pulp manufacturers like Suzano are putting these machines to work on plantations throughout the region. With the ability to know the exact location of each seedling planted, Suzano can optimise the spacing between trees and ensure uniform planting, improving tree health and growth and establishing a more productive forest.

What you will learn

This article features first-hand interviews with Komatsu Forest and how they developed the D61EM tractor, a semi-autonomous tree planter, using Hexagon’s automatic steering, speed control and individual planting head control for fully automated precision operations.

Using two SMART7 Antennas with TerraStar-C PRO Correction Services enabled high accuracy heading at the low speeds required for the application, improved scintillation protection and a longer automated uptime with shorter convergence time.

The Komatsu D61EM is a semi-autonomous tree planter engineered for automatically pitting, planting and irrigating three lines of eucalyptus seedlings simultaneously, effectively 900 seedlings per hour.

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