Planting Trees with Drones: AirSeed Delivers Seed Pods for Drone Reforestation Initiative

CAL International Partners with AirSeed Technologies for Drone Reforestation Initiative, planting trees with drones.

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M Crosby

Smart tech and engineering firm CAL International has formed a partnership with Australian green tech company AirSeed Technologies for a major climate change project that will employ aerial platform technology with the goal of planting 100 million trees by 2024. The partners have designed and engineered a seed pod delivery system for AirSeed’s existing delivery platform. Utilizing artificial and data intelligence, the AirSeed drone is a payload and delivery system that determines target areas using GPS coordinates before launching carbon pods at the ground at a rate of two-per-second.

These pods are then identified on the mapping system in accordance with the flight path, taking into account wind conditions and other variables at the date of planting, allowing the drone to return via the same route to record tree growth.

Each pod carries a gram of carbon gathered from rotting and dying vegetation, with the seed kept insulated from outside elements. The pod is activated during the rain, with rainwater absorbed by the carbon and allowing the seed to germinate. With a two-person team, one AirSeed drone is intended to plant 40,000 pods in just one day

“As soon as Andrew mentioned AirSeed to me I knew we were talking about a product and project that was ground-breaking in every sense of the word. CAL International is a unique business that not only has dedicated teams working in partnership with Blue Chip manufacturers but also incredible start-up technologies and disruptors such as NeedleSmart and AirSeed,” said CAL International founder and engineer Cliff Kirby. “As a company we blend a traditional engineering background with a company ethos built on innovation, as such we are often brought in to solve complex problems and issues in the automotive, defence, and nuclear industries. Often those complexities will span both engineering and tech fields, which allows us to create solutions that can then be scaled to volume.”

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 2018 states, “The world has 8 years remaining to prevent a massive destabilising climate change through combined rapid phase out of fossil fuels, reforestation and other natural climate solutions.”

“When AirSeed explained what they hoped to achieve, it was a challenge that we were delighted to take on. The huge significance and impact that this innovation can bring in the fight against climate change is truly global,” Kirby added. “Together with AirSeed based in Australia and South Africa and CAL based in the UK, this is a global collaboration and the very definition of the art of the possible. The collaboration between CAL and AirSeed will ultimately mean that each drone can deliver two pods per second over a designated area, planting up to 40,000 pods in a day. Through rapid automation and scale of the process, it can cover and penetrate a much wider geographical area.”

“AirSeed is a business that is pushing the boundaries with an ambitious strategy around reforestation. Having seen first-hand how CAL has taken concepts such as NeedleSmart and worked in partnership to bring forward truly unique innovation, we knew CAL would be a good fit for AirSeed,” said AirSeed co-founder Andrew Walker. “CAL have taken responsibility for refining the design of the user interface and manufacturability of the seed pod delivery system. It was important that the engineering and build of this function would integrate into the flight systems and technical aspects of the aerial platform and tele metrics.

“Working with CAL, they have managed to take an existing delivery system design and turn it into a unique pod delivery mechanism,” Walker continued. “The design and engineering that has gone into the aerial platform from CAL also means we can produce a great number of AirSeed aerial platforms and deploy these into the field quicker to speed up the process of reforestation which will help us in a race against time to mitigate climate change.”

Previous methods of planting are time-consuming, arduous and expensive, and ultimately prove ineffective in trying to combat deforestation. AirSeed’s aerial platform is not only 80% cheaper than other planting methods, but also plants seeds 25 times faster.

Read more about drones for the environment:

• Drones for Environmental Protection: Oceans Unmanned and The Ocean Cleanup Join Forces
• Drones for the Environment: Battling Trash in San Francisco Estuaries
• From Drone Light Shows to Environmental Conservation: UgCS Drone Fleet Software Helps Scientists Count Penguin Chicks
• Drones, Thermal Images and Koala Conservation

Ian attended Dominican University of California, where he received a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling and a keen interest in technology, he is now contributing to DroneLife as a staff writer.