Towards Sustainable Forest Operations: Optimal Kinematic Design of a Forwarder Crane

Forestry cranes are essential machines used in Scandinavian forest operations. Despite their importance, their design has remained unchanged for decades, raising environmental concerns due to their large size, weight, and energy consumption. Lack of analysis on how the cranes move when performing their work is one of the main reasons why their design has not improved. This article proposes the first steps to develop a novel design framework to size forestry cranes appropriately for the work they do. To this end, we employ optimization and motion analysis. The motion analysis uses data collected from a forestry crane to guide our optimization process. Using a multi-objective optimization approach, we aim to maximize the crane’s logs-moving ability while minimizing its total length. These properties enable the crane to use less power to move its joints, while also reducing weight and contributing to a reduction in energy consumption. Simulation results show the benefits that the optimization framework could bring to the forest industry.