Robot cowboys on the horizon

On the vast open spaces in Australia cattle wander far and wide as they graze, and present farmers with a time-consuming chore of gathering them all together for the yomp back to the homestead.

Scientists are developing robotic technology however, that’ll enable farmers to send out unmanned aircraft and move the livestock around in much the same way as a well trained canine.

Dr Jonathon Roberts from the CSIRO says “The helicopter will figure out where the cows are, know where they have to go and actually plan their path, move around and drive the cows in the right direction, there’s an advantage of using these helicopters they’re noisy and cows don’t like them so they should go in the opposite direction to the helicopter so just like the mustering is done now.”

“There is a lot of applications you could think about - you could survey animals and agriculture, maybe count kangaroos or count cattle,” he said.

The scientists have some work to do as yet on perfecting the computer vision, which is getting robots to see and identify things for themselves otherwise they might mistake human walkers in the bush for bovines and that could be a terrifying experience for outback tourists.

We’re hoping our own vision for robotic rustlers may be considered for future use.

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