As we speak, the world undergoes disruptive transformation in many transport sectors such as buses, trucks, ships, construction equipment etc. towards increased autonomy. In forestry, this transformation are still lagging behind although R&D- activities have been conducted to make some operations less operator dependent. However, full automation of navigation and related forest operations are still years away. At Luleå University of Technology (LTU), a fully reconfigurable “open-source”, 10 tonne off-road machine has been manufactured serving as a platform for research in autonomous forest operations. Initially, the needs to develop such machine were expressed by researchers and companies throughout northern Sweden. Those interviews showed the necessity of a platform for development and testing of autonomous forest operations. With these needs in mind, the machine was designed and manufactured at LTU and is now going to be used in several research projects focused on crane automation, site preparation with soil inversion technique, terrain object identification and avoidance, and more. In this paper, general opportunities by utilisation of this off-road platform both for researchers and companies working with forest automation development is identified. In addition, an adaptable soil inversion device has newly been developed and manufactured at LTU. The potential to minimise ground disturbance and enable process automation with this machine configuration shows promising results in initial testing.