TerraFormBot Desert Reclamation Swarm Completes 50,000 Mu of Desert Greening in Inner Mongolia: Autonomous Planting and Irrigation Integration

TerraFormBot Desert Reclamation Swarm Completes 50,000 Mu of Desert Greening

On September 1, ecological tech company GreenTerrain announced that its TerraFormBot desert reclamation robot swarm successfully completed 50,000 mu of sandy land greening in the Kubuqi Desert of Inner Mongolia. This is the world's largest robot-assisted desert reclamation project.

TerraFormBot is an approximately 800-kilogram six-wheeled autonomous robot equipped with GPS-RTK centimeter-level positioning, lidar terrain scanning, and a multifunctional robotic arm. Each robot can complete five steps in a single workflow — digging holes, planting saplings, covering soil, compacting, and connecting drip irrigation lines — with a daily planting capacity of approximately 300 saplings.

The 50-robot swarm operates in a distributed collaborative mode. A central dispatch system divides the work area into 50 sectors based on terrain data and species distribution planning, with each robot assigned to one sector. Robots communicate in real-time through a mesh network to avoid operational conflicts and path overlap.

"Traditional manual planting in desert environments is extremely inefficient — a worker can plant at most 30 trees per day and requires extensive logistical support," said Wang Jianhua, GreenTerrain's founder and CEO. "TerraFormBot not only improves efficiency tenfold but robots don't need water or rest and can operate continuously in 45-degree heat."

The project uses drought-resistant species of saxaul and sand willow, supplemented by automatic drip irrigation providing precise watering for 60 days after planting. Survival rate statistics six months later showed robot-planted saplings achieved 87% survival versus 72% for human-planted saplings in the same period. The difference primarily stems from the consistency of planting depth and soil compaction achieved by robots.

The Kubuqi Desert Management Headquarters reported that TerraFormBot reduced per-mu greening costs from 1,200 yuan to 380 yuan. GreenTerrain has signed cooperation agreements with desertification control departments in Gansu and Xinjiang, planning to expand the robot swarm to 500 units by 2029.