Often referred to as the lungs of the planet, the Amazon rainforest is in trouble – with around a third reported as already gone or degraded. A pocket of resistance in Peru has now been joined by a dual-armed robotic gardener to help with reforestation.
According to a recent World Economic Forum report, more than 870,000 km2 of prime Amazon rainforest has been cleared since 1985, mainly for agricultural operations. Non-profit Junglekeepers is on a mission to protect 55,000 acres in the Peruvian Amazon, now with the help of a collaborative robot – or cobot – called YuMi from ABB Robotics.
"As of right now, we have lost 20 percent of the total area of Amazon rainforest; without using technology today, conservation will be at a standstill," said Junglekeepers co-founder, Moshin Kazmi. "Having YuMi at our base is a great way to expose our rangers to new ways of doing things. It accelerates and expands our operations and advances our mission."
The bot was introduced in 2015 "to meet the flexible and agile production needs of the consumer electronics industry" but its dual arms, flexible gripper, camera-based component location and precise motion control also made it a good fit for any small parts assembly operation.
Built around a lightweight magnesium-alloy skeleton with plastic casing and soft padding, it was also designed to work in close collaboration with human workers. For this latest application, the robotic helper works in a remote jungle lab in Paddington country and has taken over the labor-intensive manual task of seed planting.
The YuMi first digs a hole in the soil container, pops in a seed and then covers it up and pats it down. A color-coded tag is then added to the seeded container, and the cobot moves into the next one. Planting a seed takes YuMi 12 seconds per container, or 3.5 minutes per crate, and 640 crates are planted out in each session.
The human volunteers from Junglekeepers then remove a full crate to the nursery for subsequent planting, with ABB reporting that an area the size of two soccer fields can be planted out every day thanks to this robotic assistance.
The tasks performed by the dual-armed helper are simulated and refined by an ABB team more than 12,000 km (7,460 miles) away in Västerås, Sweden, and then programming deployed remotely via the company's RobotStudio Cloud technology. Once set up, the cobot can operate autonomously, with remote technicians stepping in for troubleshooting when needed.
As well as an effective manpower solution in such a remote region, the pilot project also frees up human volunteers for "more impactful" tasks such as planting mature saplings, patrolling the area for illegal loggers, and educating the locals on rainforest preservation.
"ABB’s collaboration with Junglekeepers demonstrates how robotics and Cloud technology can play a central role in fighting deforestation as one of the major contributors to climate change," said Sami Atiya, president of ABB Robotics and Discrete Automation. "Our pilot program with the world’s most remote robot is helping automate highly repetitive tasks, freeing up rangers to undertake more important work out in the rainforest and helping them to conserve the land they live on."
Source: ABB Robotics
