Fighting the environmental crisis with innovative Canopy Research
The environmental crisis is urgent—deforestation, climate change, and biodiversity loss threaten our planet’s future. At MONKEE, we believe that the canopy holds crucial answers. By studying this vital layer, we gain insights into an ecosystem health, biodiversity, and climate resilience.
That’s why we’re developing a climbing robot to revolutionize canopy research. This innovative technology will allow scientists to access and study treetops like never before, unlocking new data to better protect our forests and fight climate change.
FIRST PROTOTYPE
GIBBY
After a lot of prototyping and testing, the first prototype was finalized. It was named after the Gibbon Monkey, famous for its far reaching limbs. Gibby features two arms with six joints each with a length of 50cm. Three adhesion points, one on each arm and one on the main body, hold the robot in place and ensure stability. The robot will weigh around 5kg and can navigate obstacles and slight overhang. These features enable it to advance far into the canopy.
FIRST PROTOTYPE
Adhesion
The mechanical design features three adhesion points. This requires the adhesion to be very reliable and robust. Having trees as environment introduces a lot of challenges such as shifting degrees of curvature, grooves, bumps and much more. Our solution to all this are screws! They don’t depend on the curvature of the tree trunk and provide a strong hold. With only 7mm screwing depth the end effector can already hold torques up to 10Nm. That’s equivalent to holding a 1m long stick with a 1kg weight attached to its end! The adhesion also includes contact sensors that can detect at what time which screw is in contact with the bark. This is crucial for a successful screwing process. Since the bark is dead matter, the adhesion mechanism shouldn’t damage the tree as long as the bark is thick enough.
VISION FOR THE FUTURE
MODULAR PLATFORM
Our goal is to maximize canopy accessibility for canopy research. For this reason we offer an integrated modular platform tailored for diverse research applications within the canopy. This allows scientists to adapt the platform for various data-gathering needs while allowing us to focus on the climbing aspect.