A new fully autonomous navigation system tailor‑made for plantation forestry is being hailed as a breakthrough for early‑stage forest management, with the Sunshine Coast‑based Australian Forest and Wood Innovations (AFWI) Centre for Sustainable Futures committing $1.5 million to accelerate its development.
The technology, known as the Autonomous Forest Navigator, is being developed under a research project called SilvaNaut: Incorporating Autonomous Operation into Australian Forest Machinery – Robotic Weed Control Conditions.
Wood Central understands the system bolts onto existing forestry machinery and allows it to steer itself between plantation rows without human input, a capability researchers say could improve safety, efficiency and long‑term wood yields.
SilvaNaut is being delivered by Daryl Killin through his company, Native Conifers Carbon Sink — the first organisation to register a tree‑planting project for carbon credits under the Carbon Farming Initiative in 2012 — and Killin said forestry presents challenges that traditional automation systems cannot handle.
“There’s a real need for an autonomous vehicle that can do weed control in place of humans or human‑driven machinery,” he said. “But unlike driverless cars or broad‑acre agriculture, we’re talking about remote locations, uneven ground, harvest residue, and a very high need for precision, because if you spray the wrong chemical in the wrong place, you can kill the tree.”
Designed for young plantations aged 0–3 years — when weed pressure is highest and manual labour is most intensive — the system uses high‑resolution GNSS, LiDAR, inertial sensors (IMU) and AI‑based obstacle detection to navigate rough terrain. This geospatial backbone will also support future applications such as inventory assessment, fire management and forest monitoring.
Tackling labour shortages, rising costs and safety all-in-one.
It comes as Australia’s forest value chain faces mounting pressure from labour shortages, rising operational costs and increasing safety risks. Manual weed control is labour‑intensive and often carried out in hazardous conditions.
“Not many people want to put on a knapsack and work in remote areas with snakes, spiders and rough terrain anymore,” Killin said. “And even when people are available, you’re limited by human constraints; you can’t work at night, reliability varies, and safety risks are always present.”
By removing operators from high‑risk terrain and enabling 24‑hour operation, the Autonomous Forest Navigator allows growers to target optimal spraying windows and reduce early‑stage tree losses.
“Weeds in the first two years are critical,” Killin said. “If you lose 200 trees out of 1,000 per hectare early on, you’ve lost future options for wood volume, and you can’t put those trees back later. That loss shows up 25 or 30 years down the track, right when the return on investment really matters.”
And whilst automation is well established in agriculture, Killin said existing systems are too costly, too fragile and poorly suited to forestry.
“Agricultural systems are often designed for flat land and annual crops,” he warned. “Forestry is a much longer game. We needed a forestry‑specific solution that’s cost‑effective, robust and fit for purpose, not something adapted from agriculture that doesn’t quite work.”
SilvaNaut aims to fill this gap with a vehicle‑agnostic, bolt‑on autonomous system for mid‑sized forestry equipment that complies with international technical standards. The system is also being engineered to work alongside drones, enabling smart task allocation between aerial and ground‑based weed control.
“There’s still an important role for ground‑based rigs,” Killin said. “Our system is designed to work with drones, not compete with them, choosing the right tool for the right job.”
The project is being co‑designed with seven major forestry companies — HQPlantations, HVP Plantations, Australian Bluegum Plantations, Australian Carbon Farming, Forestry Corporation NSW, Forest Products Corporation and Midway Limited — ensuring strong industry relevance and a clear pathway to adoption.
Native Conifers Carbon Sink has also engaged James Cook University to train the system to distinguish young plantation trees from weed species and ensure interoperability with drone‑spraying technology. Meaanwhile a Trans‑Tasman collaboration with Lincoln Agritech and Wrybill Robotics will fast‑track existing New Zealand technologies for Australian conditions, supported by the New Zealand forest research sector.
Field trials will begin in Queensland before expanding across Australia. Performance will be assessed against navigation accuracy, labour savings, safety outcomes, fuel use and overall cost‑benefit compared with manual operations.
According to Professor Mark Brown, Director of the AFWI Centre for Sustainable Futures and UniSC’s Forest Research Institute, the project aligns with AFWI’s mission to improve Australia’s wood‑fibre productivity: “By improving early‑stage plantation management, this project will help narrow the 30–40 per cent gap between biological potential and realised wood yield, bringing together industry experience, AI expertise and real‑world testing to build something foresters can actually use.”
The project is also expected to support workforce renewal by creating new roles in forest robotics, remote operations and data‑driven management. “This is about giving forest growers confidence to adopt automation in a way that makes sense for forestry,” Killin said. “If we get weed control right early, we protect future yield, improve safety, and make better use of the wood fibre we already have.”
- To learn more about the project, click here to read $1.5 million AFWI funding to advance autonomous forestry machinery and boost sustainable wood production from the Australian Forest and Wood Innovations (AFWI) Centre for Sustainable Futures website.
