Suhandan is a 14 year old student living in Scotland who’s passionate about robotics and environmental conservation. Suhandan has built a first prototype of his Tree Hugger robot idea which will use a range of sensors: Thermal, to take readings of the tree’s temperature and Soil moisture, to take data from the soil at the base of the tree. An ESP-32 camera is programmed with machine learning to recognize diseased tree bark. Additionally, the robot is equipped with a prototype robotic arm, so in future iterations, a locator tag or a data monitoring tag can be placed. Plans include finding tree tags that could transmit live data to scientists and creating an open-source platform for students and conservation groups to replicate the technology.

Having built a proof of concept, our ‘I’ve got an idea’ Fund award will enable Suhandan to bring his robot up to a realistic scale and deploy it for meaningful field testing traversing actual forest floors and collecting tree data.

You can see a short video of Suhandan introducing his Tree Hugger idea here.

We were impressed by Suhandan’s enthusiasm for and commitment to his idea. We wish him luck and look forward to following his progress.