Woodworking – Process – Timber harvesting or processing
Reexamination Certificate
2000-12-20
2002-01-29
Bray, W Donald (Department: 3725)
Woodworking
Process
Timber harvesting or processing
C144S003100, C144S004100, C144S034100, C144S336000, C144S357000, C144S367000, C144S382000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06341632
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION AND PRIOR ART
The present invention relates to a method and a system for timber harvesting and forestry.
Conventional timber harvesting and work operations in connection thereto are today carried out comparatively primitively in the sense that the forest raw material is nearly handled as a bulk product. Even if an evaluation of standing forest timber is carried out as a preparation for a certain harvesting this is regularly of a rather rough type. Accordingly, the real outcome of the harvesting may be considerably different than the outcome theoretically calculated. An additional problem of the timber harvesting technique of today is that it tends to be run in a comparatively small scale in the sense that as a rule only one seller and one buyer of wood raw material are involved in a certain harvesting. Borders between different forest owners have to be carefully considered, which is a consequence of the fact that the forest raw material is not possible to identify in detail. Furthermore, it is a fact that the driver of a harvesting machine today gets a very poor support when executing the harvesting work. There is per se as a rule a cross-cutting computer on the harvester but this computer does not obtain any other connection to the tree under processing than that which is obtained via the contact between the harvesting arrangement of the harvesting machine and the tree. There is, accordingly, well founded reasons to state that the precision of the cross-cutting work can be improved.
The consequences of the shortcomings mentioned above are considerable costs. A large amount of manual planning and administration work is required.
Attention is invited to U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,725, entitled “Method for Timber Harvesting and System for Forestry”.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the present invention is primarily to create conditions for rationalisation of forest harvesting and planning thereof.
According to a first aspect, the invention aims at creating improved possibilities to correct, in rational way, harvesting plans with consideration of the real result of the harvesting.
According to another aspect the invention aims at creating conditions for providing an improved computer support for the driver of the harvesting machine, a fully automatic control of the harvesting machine being intended primarily.
According to a third aspect the invention aims at creating conditions to handle the wood raw material not as an anonymous bulk product but as products having an identity of origin.
According to a fourth aspect of the invention it is intended to create even better follow-up of harvesting planning by extracting, late in the processing chain of the piece of timber, information regarding the real degree of utilisation of the piece of timber.
According to a fifth aspect of the invention it is aimed at to reduce the problem being connected to locate in the terrain pieces of timber having been processed by means of harvesting machines. Such localisation is as a rule carried out by forwarders, the task of which is to transport the timber out of the forest.
The first aspect of the invention is based upon the realisation that it is possible by means of extremely advanced remote registration and analysis technique to create very detailed and precise data bases concerning characteristics of a forest stand, the tree stand itself being included as well as the geographical and geological conditions therein. In the data base thus achieved, which may be said to involve a very accurate and exact reproduction of the forest stand, the individual tree is intended to be determined as to position with an accuracy in the order of some decimetre of a few centimetres. Furthermore, the individual tree should be carefully estimated with regard to wood quality and contents. As an example, it may be mentioned that the resolution of the data base should be such that a silvicultural planner by means of an ordinary computer mouse should be capable of clicking on an individual tree and turn and pivot the same and also achieve a computer based cross-cutting prognosis. In this connection the invention aims at creating conditions for a very accurate and rapid follow-up of the harvesting plan by feed-back of real harvesting data. The invention aspect relevant in this connection is dealt with in the enclosed claim
1
.
The second aspect of the invention is achieved by that primarily defined in the enclosed claim
2
, claim
3
defining an optimal development resulting in automatic control of the harvesting machine during harvesting. This aspect of the invention is based on the accurate position determination of the harvesting machine and in particular the harvesting arrangement thereof carried out according to the invention. Since the harvesting plan is intended to be extremely accurate and, besides, the position of the harvesting arrangement is accurately determinable in the terrain, the harvesting arrangement may be targetedly controlled in accordance with the premade harvesting plan so that predetermined trees become the subject of harvesting. This creates possibilities for a very advanced computer based harvesting planning where the driver of the harvesting machine primarily gets a purely correcting task, i.e. he is supposed to normally except that the harvesting machine and the harvesting arrangement thereof are automatically controlled to harvest selected trees.
The third aspect according to the invention is achieved by that defined in the enclosed claim
4
.
Thus, the present invention delivers the solution that in a method for forest harvesting by means of a harvesting machine comprising a vehicle and a harvesting arrangement mounted thereon the position of the harvesting machine is determined in connection to felling a tree and at least one piece of timber obtained from the tree is marked with this position information or a code by means of which the piece of timber may be associated to actual position information stored in a data base.
The piece of timber so obtained will by this become an individual connectable to the location of growth in question, which means that the individual forest owner with certainty is able to determine if the piece of timber in question belongs to him or some other person after the transport of the piece of timber away from the very harvesting place.
The conversion of the timber raw material from a bulk product into individuals able to be identified described above means also that not only a plurality of sellers may be comfortably kept apart with respect to their products, but a plurality of buyers may also be handled on one and the same location of harvesting. When the idea of the invention is consummately utilised, position information marked on a piece of timber is intended to be that exact that it shall be possible to state from exactly which tree the piece of timber emanates. The analysis of the timber stand taken place before the harvesting is also intended to be carried out through the remote analysis technique discussed below that precisely that the individual tree may be unambiguously determined with respect to position and also be forecasted with a rather high accuracy with respect to timber quality and volume. Such an accurate analysis in advance means conditions for a very accurate calculation of the yield of a certain harvesting in advance. Furthermore, the very harvesting may be very targetedly controlled so that exactly the trees to be harvested for an optimum result also really get harvested. According to the invention a computer arrangement arranged on the harvesting machine may be adapted to control the harvesting machine on the basis of data emanating from the pre-analysis of the forest region and harvesting instructions determined on the basis thereof to only harvest exactly the trees determined in advance to be harvested. Such a high resolution, i.e. at the level of a single tree, may be achieved if an accurate registration of the forest is carried out by means of a photographical and other registration technique and these registra
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