Problem Description
Why Urban Reforestation Matter
Forests pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, support biodiversity, stabilize soils, and keep water cycles healthier. Urban areas are a big and growing part of the planet, so bringing trees back into cities is essential. Urban reforestation cools heat islands, filters polluted air, soaks up stormwater, and turns vacant or neglected land into living green space. By restoring tree cover in cities, we improve everyday life for residents while also contributing to broader climate and ecological goals.
Our Users
Our primary users are city and suburban forestry teams who are responsible for planning and executing planting projects. They manage many scattered sites across a region, often with small crews, volunteers, and tight budgets. These users care about ensuring that a majority of planted trees survive, meeting grant commitments, and showing visible progress to residents and funders.
User Needs
These users need more healthy trees established every year, and they want those trees to survive and grow. They need ways to reduce the physical strain and time spent on repetitive tasks so their limited crews and volunteers can cover more sites. They also need accurate records of where each seedling was planted and what happened on site, so they can report results, plan follow-up care, and make better decisions about future planting projects.
Why Seedlings?
Seedlings give cities a practical way to plant at scale. They are cheaper per tree, easier to transport, and simpler to handle across many small, spread-out sites. Seedlings also adapt better to local soil and conditions, developing healthier root systems and are less likely to develop girdled roots than more developed trees, supporting long-term survival. In comparison to seeds, seedlings have a higher survivability rate, which is essential when planting in inconsistent land conditions and in small planting sites where there is little room for losses or replanting. By focusing on seedlings, this project aims to help cities plant more trees, stretch their budgets further, and build lasting, healthy urban canopies in areas that have been overlooked for years.
Use Case
Emma is an urban forestry coordinator for the City of Pittsburgh, working on a project reforesting a vacant lot. She deploys the Project Canopy Robot and inputs the planting site boundaries and the types of trees she wants to plant. The interface estimates the tree locations on the map and the mission time. After this, she loads trays of seedlings onto the robot and confirms the mission.
Figure 1: User Selecting Planting Area
As it drives onto the lot, the robot uses LiDAR, camera, IMU, and GPS data to construct a 3D SLAM map of the area, localizes itself, and plans a cost-efficient path that covers the full planting region while avoiding rocks, benches, and existing trees. When it detects a person too close, it stops and replans the path to maintain a safe distance, keeping operation suitable for busy urban sites.
Upon arriving at a planting location, the robot drills a hole to the target depth. It hits a buried rock and the digging controller halts the drill, retracts it, flags that spot as blocked, and shifts by a small offset to try again nearby. Once a suitable hole is made, the robot loads a single seedling from storage, deposits it into the chute, and places it in the hole. The robot then tamps the soil to compact the soil around the stem. The robot then marks that planting seedling on the map as successfully planted.
Figure 2: Robot Planting Seedlings
Throughout the mission, the robot maintains a dynamic digital map of the locations of all obstacles and planted seedlings. The app sends progress updates to Emma, including the count of successful plantings, failed digs, and the dynamic map. At the end of the run, the robot returns to its starting point, enters a safe idle state, and uploads detailed logs of every planting, failure-recovery event, and final map of the urban forest. Emma reviews the summary, confident that planting sites matched her plan.
