Will Sheep Dogs Lose Their Jobs to Robot Canines?
Watch out sheep dogs: a robot could be coming for your jobs.
The scenario may sound far-fetched, but on Tuesday, a New Zealand company called Rocos uploaded a video demonstrating how a robot dog can potentially herd a flock of sheep.
The robot comes from Boston Dynamics. Last year, the company began leasing the four-legged “Spot” machine, which is capable of running at 3.5 miles per hour. The same bot can also be programmed to autonomously walk around an area, and perform potential jobs, like scouting a location and providing surveillance.
Rocos, a robot deployment company, decided to partner with Boston Dynamics on using Spot for agricultural work. In the video, the New Zealand company shows how the robot canine can easily walk around a farm to not only monitor the surrounding crops, but also herd dozens of live sheep.
“As you can see in that video, (Spot) has a few applications in agriculture and herding sheep could be one of them, but it is just a trial,” Rocos told PCMag in an email.
The company envisions not one, but several Spot-like robots working a farm. The machines will also be able to supply data, which can then be relayed back to the farming providers for real-time monitoring.
We’ll have to wait and see how good Spot can actually herd sheep. However, Rocos says the technology is actually designed to help address worker shortages, and maintain crop yields, which should have a net benefit for society.
“The automation of farming is changing the way farmers work, increasing efficiency of the world’s food production for an ever growing human population,” the company’s video goes on to say.
