Robot Ranchers Monitor Animals On Giant Australian Farms (newscientist.com) 56
An anonymous reader writes: Sheep and cattle farms in the Australian outback are vast as well as remote. For example, the country's most isolated cattle station, Suplejack Downs in the Northern Territory, extends across 4000 square kilometres and takes 13 hours to reach by car from the nearest major town, Alice Springs. But robots are coming to the rescue. A two-year trial, which starts next month, will train a 'farmbot' to herd livestock, keep an eye on their health, and check they have enough pasture to graze on. Sick and injured animals will be identified using thermal and vision sensors that detect changes in body temperature and walking gait, says Salah Sukkarieh of the University of Sydney, who will carry out the trial on several farms in central New South Wales. The robot, which has not yet been named, is a more sophisticated version of an earlier model, Shrimp, which was designed to herd groups of 20 to 150 dairy cows.
Q: Do Androids dream of electric sheep? (Score:3)
Answered at last - No, but they do herd them.
Do Androids herd sheep? (Score:2)
Bystander: "Hey android! Do you herd sheep?"
Android: "That's incorrect, it should be "Have you heard sheep.""
I'm just wondering (Score:5, Funny)
Why we need to farm Giant Australians.
It doesn't even seem like a very good idea...
Re: (Score:3)
We didn't respect regular-sized Australians.
We have only ourselves to blame.
YIPIEYEYIYAY! (Score:5, Funny)
You have 30 seconds to comply.
Re: (Score:2)
The word is actually spelt 'dogie [wikipedia.org].'
Re: (Score:2)
Shrimpy McShrimpface, obviously.
Re: Ranchy McRanchface (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1. Scorched baron earth
Is that like duke mars?
FTFY (Score:2)
Sick and injured humans will be identified using thermal and vision sensors that detect changes in body temperature
been done (Score:3)
Sick and injured humans will be identified using thermal and vision sensors that detect changes in body temperature
Since the SARS outbreak back in early 2002, they already do this [nbcnews.com] in airports... Why not animals?
Cool now can hack for food and I don't care if I (Score:2)
Cool now can hack for food when put out of work and I don't care if I caught as then the state will have to feed me + give me an room + a doctor.
Re:Cool now can hack for food and I don't care if (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it terrible? Since 1790, we've unemployed 82% of the workforce. Looking at the history of American agriculture [agclassroom.org], 90% of the labor force was farmers in 1790; by 1850, evil technical progress developing new farm techniques and diesel hardware dropped that to only 58%. In 1900, just 38% of Americans still had good, wholesome farm jobs; and by 1950 it was a staggeringly-low 12.2%. By 2000, farm workers only made up 1.9% of America's workforce, and today it's even lower.
Is it any wonder we now suffer from unemployment as high as 95% in many areas, with a national unemployment rate of 82% among the labor force? Only 41 million Americans have jobs, and their taxes support 300 million Americans on welfare. Our economy has collapsed due to the constant reduction of the workforce as farm jobs have been eliminated by newer technology, disenfranchising the worker with a long and constant stream of lay-offs.
But hey, at least the few of us with jobs are rich fat cats. Rather than spending 43% of the household money on food as in 1900, we only spent 30% in 1950, and 13% in 2000; today we spend under 11.5% of our income on food, and the rich among us can have things like smart phones and XBox video game consoles. Too bad about 89% of Americans being homeless and jobless and hungry.
Re: (Score:2)
82% unemployment rate? Only 41 million Americans employed? What stats are you looking at? According to the ones I'm looking at, there was an unemployment rate of 5% in April 2016 (Source [tradingeconomics.com]). Stretching those stats as far back and they'll go, the highest the unemployment rate hit was 10.8% (around 1983). Another page from the same website shows 151 million people employed (Source [tradingeconomics.com]). The lowest number of employed people since 1950 was still over 57 million.
So just how are you assuming that only 41 million
Re: (Score:2)
82% unemployment rate? Only 41 million Americans employed? What stats are you looking at?
GPP was suggesting that replacing some jobs with robots would lead to a world of unemployment as all our jobs go away. I did the math starting at 1790 with all the jobs that went away, instead of looking at the real world. Problem?
whoosh... (Score:2)
I think that is the sound you are looking for...
Re: (Score:2)
So, it's either -
Woosh!
Or I have been trolled.
It's hard to tell these days.
You're skipping over (Score:2)
So yeah, it's gonna suck when A.I.s and expert systems put another 89% out of work. Your grandkids grandkids will probably be posting the same crap to whatever replaces slashdot in 100 years. In the meantime you a
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't skip that; I selected America's economy and the decline of farm jobs. During the Industrial Revolution, America grew as a manufacture base; England was already a manufacture base and took the hit of high unemployment. I was trying to avoid the discussion on time scales in job economics because it's long and complex.
As you say, there was mass-unemployment after the Industrial Revolution; and that is not a required outcome of technical advancement. The type of technical advancement which caused
Re: (Score:2)
Cool now can hack for food when put out of work
You were never going to have this job anyway. It's much tougher than most of what people put up with, and that includes sewer workers and IT helpdesk positions.
Robotic Death Adders (Score:2)
Fuck Australia.
Even their sissy short-pantsed football players are deadly.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.a... [brisbanetimes.com.au]
Re: (Score:2)
"Sissy"? That's hilarious given the HELMETS and PADDING that swaddle the precious baby American football babies, er, players.
Re: (Score:2)
Australian football players all dress like the cast of 1970's gay porn.
http://cache3.asset-cache.net/... [asset-cache.net]
I wish ... (Score:2)
Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Farms with animals? (Score:2)
Why would a farm need animals? How barbarian.
The future is computer-controlled, plant-based farming [mit.edu]. Grow local, from anywhere.
Boring! (Score:2)
How boring. If at least it would have been drones with cattle-prods...then it would have been news for nerds instead of tools for cowboys.
Re: (Score:2)
You're just a beef industry shill, succeeding in making me hungry.
You don't kill the calf straight away, you put it in a box so it can't exercise at all for a week or three first.
not farmbot. (Score:2)
there are already at least two different robots dubbed "farmbot" so in the /. fashion, i dub this robot YARNFB (Yet Another Robot Named FarmBot)
How bad is that?! (Score:2)
They gave it a mouth!!!
The photos in the article are deceptive (Score:2)
They make cattle ranches look lovely, with beautiful green grass. Australian cattle ranches don't look like that..... at all.
They look like this - http://www.beefcentral.com/wp-... [beefcentral.com]
Robot cowboys (Score:1)