Project description:

About one third of Germany is covered by forest. Innovative technologies are needed for the sustainable management of German and Central European forests in order to meet the challenges of climate change combined with an increasing shortage of skilled workers.

The aim of the joint project 'KIFahrWald' by the project partners Hohenloher Spezial-Maschinenbau GmbH, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Forstdienstleistung Hegenbarth is to develop an assistance system for autonomous driving in forests on unpaved roads using artificial intelligence. The assistance system supports the operator in controlling the machine and thus cognitively relieves the operator. Artificial intelligence lends itself as a solution for such an assistance system, as demanding scenarios can be captured and complex control sequences can be learned. In the project, the complex off-road driving tasks are carried out by linking machine learning, analytical and AI-based control technology and conventional vehicle control. In a first step, the planned control concept will be realized as an assistance system to avoid accidents and to relieve the operator. The AI methods developed for this purpose form the basis for automated and fully autonomous forestry machines. Due to their universal character, the AI methods are not limited to application within forestry, but can be transferred to all vehicles that use unpaved roads.

This project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the funding code 01IS23018 A-C.

Project consortium: