New Zealand Journal of Forestry (2016) 60(4): 2
©New Zealand Institute of Forestry

Editorial
New technology and its implications

Chris Goulding



With robots, automation and self-driving cars constantly in the news, most readers are well aware that the above phrase from Yeats sonnet is as applicable now than when he wrote it 80 years ago. New technologies affect forest management and wood processing every bit as much as in other industries. The defect-processing work station in a finger-jointing line that used to require half a dozen workers and manually operated cross-cut saws is now carried out by image processing combined with an automated, optimising saw processing timber at high speed. Mechanisation of harvesting is at last being increasingly applied in New Zealand, although there remain plenty of opportunities for improvement, particularly with regards to steep country operations and to stem defect recognition linked to optimal log-making.
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