{"id":216697,"date":"2026-01-04T19:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T19:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/216697\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T19:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T19:10:07","slug":"year-in-review-ai-driven-chainsaw-drone-offers-safer-tree-trimming-near-powerlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/216697\/","title":{"rendered":"Year in Review: AI-driven chainsaw drone offers safer tree trimming near powerlines"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cOver the last eight years, we\u2019ve been developing unmanned aerial vehicles [UAV] like drones,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore submitting our proposal, we met with lots of different industries to see what could be useful to explore.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to be a group of academics coming up with solutions that may not actually be needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project has received a $10 million grant over five years from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.<\/p>\n
The team includes Green, UC mechanical engineering professor Dan Zhao, UAV expert Dr Sam Schofield and University of Auckland mechanical engineering professor Karl Stol.<\/p>\n
One topic was the safety of trimming trees around live powerlines while nearby arborist work was carried out.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially, we developed a drone to carry an electric pruning tool that trimmed smaller branches, offering really good precision.\u201d<\/p>\n
A chainsaw drone at work using AI software to cut small branches off trees. Photo \/ Sacha Skinner, University of Canterbury<\/p>\n
For branches larger than 30mm in diameter, a chainsaw drone was developed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re using a small battery-driven chainsaw that can prune branches and twigs larger than 30 millimetres in diameter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe use a DJI Matrice drone, which has a USB-C socket interface for our processor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we plug the processor in, we can see all the sensors and fly it using the controller.<\/p>\n
Adjusting the chainsaw drone during trials. Photo \/ Sacha Skinner, University of Canterbury<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fly near to a branch, tap the branch on the screen, and the drone takes over, using AI technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
The drone operators have been working with drones for 10 years and are very experienced flyers.<\/p>\n
The AI in the computer processor is \u201ctrained\u201d using thousands of examples of branches, negotiating leaves, twigs and wind and learning how to auto-navigate once a branch has been identified.<\/p>\n
Green said the team, along with Kiwi and international UAV experts, researchers and manufacturers, hoped to produce AI-driven chainsaw drones commercially next year for use across a range of different industries where jobs are inaccessible and hazardous for humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOver the last eight years, we\u2019ve been developing unmanned aerial vehicles [UAV] like drones,\u201d he said. \u201cBefore submitting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2840,31696,1863,3390,6326,138,5164,2841,25094,3685,31178,6637,16655,78,8454,296,121522,6187,663,3234,3180,111,43,139,69,8617,4517,30855,6289,762,3175,25530,544,6182,1361,7563,15981,31697,121521,379],"class_list":["post-216697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-across","tag-aidriven","tag-back","tag-best","tag-biggest","tag-business","tag-chainsaw","tag-country","tag-drone","tag-events","tag-favourites","tag-gave","tag-glimpse","tag-in","tag-including","tag-into","tag-livelihoods","tag-lives","tag-looks","tag-months","tag-near","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offers","tag-past","tag-powerlines","tag-readers","tag-review","tag-rural","tag-safer","tag-some","tag-stories","tag-that","tag-those","tag-tree","tag-trimming","tag-yarns","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}