Five years ago I got the opportunity to test a Drone. I wanted to see what it could used for in the forestry. It did´t take long before I discovered that you could get 3-D data from the Forest if you took a lot of pictures and processed the pictures on a computer. It was rather cumbersome and took a long time but it was impressing. At that time the drones was not so good and one windy day I lost the control of the drone and I watched how it drifted away and the battery lost it power. The drone hit the ground and was destroyed.
But an idea has emerged. Wouldn´t it be possible to use the same technique without sending an expensive tool up in the air? I took my phone and took a lot of pictures and processed them in the computer and a digital forest was made. In the digital forest I could see the stems and measure them. Still it was very time-consuming and hard to succeed. I thought that it was not possible to use in practical forestry. Fast forward a few years ahead. Apple and Google released AR to iOS and Android in the end of 2017 and suddenly the situation has changed. Now you could process the data in real time, something that previous took minutes was now immediately available. I got an idea about leaving all the manual measuring tools behind and only bring a phone to the forest. Arboreal was a fact and the journey had begun.
// Johan Ekenstedt