Harveri : A Small (Semi-)Autonomous Precision Tree Harvester

Edo Jelavic, Tun Kapgen, Simon Kerscher, Dominic Jud, Marco Hutter

Keywords: harvesting, autonomy, harvester, forestry, robot

TL;DR: Development of a small autonomous tree harvester

Abstract: This article presents the development of a small harvester (Harveri) targeted for thinning operations and energy tree harvesting. We are interested in two possible use cases: teleoperation by a human and fully autonomous operation. We introduce Harveri itself, together with the hardware modifications made to facilitate the automation of the machine. Furthermore, we describe the sensors used and the rationale behind each sensor choice and physical placement on the machine. The article also discusses computation units used to achieve the teleoperation and autonomy task and connectivity to the machine. Most of the autonomy features are ported from our previous work on HEAP, and in this article, we describe the modifications necessary for Harveri. We present the current automation progress and give directions for future work.