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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-for-one-welcome-our-new-Chainsaw-Bot-overlords dept.

Sir Garlon writes:

"Researchers in Japan have developed a chainsaw-wielding robot that climbs trees and prunes off limbs. Such pruning is currently done by humans, who can't always use a cherry picker and sometimes have to climb the tree and operate the chainsaw one-handed. That is, not surprisingly, rather dangerous. The robot is still experimental, and it's remotely operated, not fully autonomous. But it's an impressive gadget none the less. Robots with chainsaws, what could possibly go wrong? Linked article includes video."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday February 26 2014, @03:56PM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @03:56PM (#7508)

    It's not a flawed Idea, nor is it designed to remove "just a few" branches. You are confusing urban tree trimming with actual forestry.

    Its designed to remove All Branches up to a certain height. This is typically done in dense stands of relatively straight trees such as you would find in a tree farm. [wikimedia.org]

    You typically want to keep under-story branches to a minimum, especially if your crop is for Poles (telephone poles, etc). Keeping lower branches cut makes the trees grow straight. Its also great for preventing grass fires from turning into crown fires.

    Some of these plantations are so dense that getting a bucket truck in there is hard, so they climb, (with boot spikes and a belt, leaving both hands free [wikimedia.org] to handle the saw (you can tell who ever wrote the summary has never worked in the woods).

    Anyway, depending on the weight of this thing, one or two guys could trim up branches from an acre of trees very quickly. And when you have 500 acres of the same type of tree that's pretty important.

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