A group of researchers at Canterbury University have developed a chainsaw drone to help tackle risky trees.
The university's Vision team has spent the last eight years developing unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAVs, like drones, that can use precise complex, dynamic environments.
Last year, the team developed a drone that was capable of carrying a pruning tool which could do precision jobs. They wanted to create something which could handle larger branches though.
Chainsaw drones are the next step forward in a University of Canterbury project equipping unmanned aerial tools to carry out tasks that are hazardous for humans. Photo: Supplied
Computer science professor Richard Green developed the chainsaw drone with UC mechanical engineering professor Dan Zhao, UAV expert Dr Sam Schofield and University of Auckland mechanical engineering professor Karl Stol.
Professor Green said the drone was a "breakthrough".
He said it had the potential to make trimming trees around power lines and pylons safer and more efficient without the need for ladders and scaffolding in those "hard to get to place".
"There are so many applications where this is useful," he said.
"You have to leave the powerlines live to prune them. So they're pruning them with big long poles or sometimes even climbing up near these powerlines to prune branches."
Professor Richard Green and Dr Sam Schofield with the new chainsaw drone they've developed as part of the UC Vision research team project. Photo: Supplied
Professor Green said he had heard from businesses confident it would improve the health and safety of their staff.
"We believe this tool will be transformative across a range of different industries where jobs are inaccessible and hazardous for humans, making them safer, more cost-effective and more efficient. This includes arboriculture, electricity infrastructure industry and civil construction."
But getting to this point has proven more challenging than expected.
The project faced technological challenges like accurately tracking the drone's motion, targeting the right branch, and precision control making sure it could fly and cut in tricky conditions.
"[It's] really challenging for a human to do, to manually operate a drone in that environment. And so that's why we've automated that part of it.
"The drone with stereo-cameras on board so it can see exactly where the branch is in 3D, so we've got AI-navigation processing to recognise a branch and the leaves around it and automatically navigate it to this branch that's moving all over the place, avoiding all the leaves and branches in the way."
The project has been funded over five years by a $10 million grant from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
The team are working in collaboration with a number of Kiwi UAV experts, international researchers, and UAV manufacturers and users, with hopes to have the chainsaw drone ready for commercialisation next year.
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