Remote Timber - Robust and safe systems for remote-controlled timber loaders

The forest industry operates in a highly competitive market and needs to continuously streamline operations. Efficient logistics flows are central to reducing energy consumption, environmental pressure and reducing costs, thereby strengthening competitiveness. In some cases, the forests harvested are stored on timber terminals before being transported to the industries.

The aim of the project is to increase the efficiency of timber terminals through remote control. Remote control of machines at timber terminals can be justified from a cost, productivity and work environment perspective. If an individual operator is able to take care of unloading and loading at several timber terminals, this will lead to a significant increase in efficiency.

The project will develop a demonstrator with a remotely controlled timber loader at one or more of SCA’s timber terminals. The timber loader shall implement and handle specified use cases and ensure a very high level of safety at the timber terminal. The solution developed should be robust with high reliability. A system model to calculate when remote control is economically viable and which infrastructure needs to be on site will be developed within the project.

Mid Sweden University in collaboration with SCA, Skogforsk, Volvo, Biometria and Telia.