The reason why a pruning robot is actually a really good and important idea is that climbing trees and then holding on with one hand (or no hands) while sawing big heavy bits of them off is rather incredibly dangerous, with injury rates about 10 times that of working in a factory. This teleoperated robot means that you can stand very, very far away while the pruning gets done, and the ‘bot seems to do quite a good job, able to climb up and down trees with no trouble while cutting branches off in a spiral motion.
At 13 kilograms, the robot can drive straight up trees between 6 and 25 centimeters (2.3-9.8 in) in diameter at 0.25 m/s, while tackling branches with a diameter of less than 5 cm. It can automatically adapt to a variety of tree morphologies (that’s a thing, right?), and is relatively energy efficient (for whatever that’s worth) since it can support itself passively on the tree by using its own weight to securely grip the trunk.
via IEEE Spectrum
