We are excited to announce that our former employees Ram Sai Chigurupati and Jakub Wołosz have both defended their master’s theses with top grades in October. They worked together on developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems in the wood harvesting context: AI to power our Smart Chainsaws and AI for analyzing drone images of harvesting operations. While the two devoted a lot of brain power to their outstanding research, field work in the forest was also an essential part of it.
Mr. Chigurupati earned his MSc from TU Dresden with his thesis “Activity Recognition and Stem Segment Identification Using Smart Chainsaws”. In this work he developed and evaluated the machine learning models that are needed for the Smart Chainsaw to “feel” how much wood is harvested.
Mr. Wołosz defended his thesis titled “Utilizing a U-NET Convolutional Network to Characterize Felled Tree Stem Sections on UAV-Orthomosaics” at Warsaw University of Life Sciences. Here, he applied several machine learning models that were pre-trained for characterizing windthrown trees to identify and measure newly harvested stem sections.
It was a great pleasure to see our mentees grow their skillset and teach them about data science in forestry. With this experience and their impressive talents, these two young men are well-equipped for contributing substantially to the workforce. We wish them success with all their future endeavors!
