The Avocado robot designed to explore unexplored treetops
Marie Donlon | January 31, 2024A new robot that resembles an avocado will eventually be used to collect data from elevated and hard-to-reach treetops in forests.
The aptly named Avocado, which was developed by researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation and ETH Zurich, is expected to autonomously navigate through treetops in forests, particularly in tropical rainforests where the dense canopy reportedly holds the greatest number of living organisms.
Source: ETH Zurich
According to the researchers, exploring these habitats is extremely difficult; climbing the trees only allows researchers to selectively collect data while existing airborne robots like drones are hindered by their rotor blades, which tend to get tangled up in the foliage.
As such, the team is now attempting to gain access to such areas from above via a cable-tethered robot that is attached to the top branches of a tree and is subsequently lowered from there into the tree's crown. This technique was reportedly inspired by spiders, which abseil on their silk threads.
The researchers explained that once the Avocado robot is attached to the tree, it is capable of moving up and down independently thanks to a winch located in the upper section of the robot’s housing. Meanwhile, the robot also contains two rotors — located where the seed of the avocado would be — that enable the robot to gain momentum and maneuver around branches, foliage and other obstacles.
Further, the robot also features an integrated camera from which it receives information about its environment, and it is capable of carrying a variety of instruments — including humidity and temperature sensors to map the microclimate in various sections of the tree canopy, or gripper arms and air filters for collecting DNA samples, for instance.
The Avocado robot is detailed in the article, "Design, Modeling, and Control of AVOCADO: A Multimodal Aerial-Tethered Robot for Tree Canopy Exploration,” which appears in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
For more information on the Avocado robot, watch the accompanying video that appears courtesy of ETH Zurich.