New tree-planting technique through drones

This technique can plant 100,000 trees in a single day. Company has a goal of planting 500 billion trees in the next 30 years.

While the traditional uses of drones are typically commercial or recreational, one UK-based company is using them to help the environment. BioCarbon Engineering has teamed up with drone manufacturer Parrot to create a system for autonomously planting trees to fight deforestation.

According to the World Economic Forum, the world cuts down roughly 15 billion trees but only plants 9 billion. This is in part because replanting manually is very slow and expensive. The drone-based system on the other hand is able to plant trees ten times faster than humans, for 85% less money, and in places humans can't reach.

The drones are organized in fleets of 6 drones each. Each fleet will first use GPS and computer vision techniques to create a 3D map of the terrain to be reforested. The drones will then come back and shoot germinated seed pods in pre-defined areas of the terrain. They can fire the seeds at roughly one every second for a total of 100,000 each day. The drones can also carry different seed types to help create a more diverse ecosystem.

The company released an overview of how the system would work a few years ago, but it has now been implemented and is beginning to restore mangroves in Myanmar.