When it comes to shepherds, we always think of endless grasslands, experienced shepherds, and loyal sheepdogs. But have you ever thought that one day shepherds and sheepdogs will be replaced by mechanical dogs? And the mechanical dog can also do a better job. How does it do it? How many sheep can it take care of at one time? Don’t worry, let’s walk into the new American shepherd dog-Boston Mechanical Dog together today.
Herding sheep is not an easy task. It seems that sheep have inexhaustible energy. When the number of sheep is relatively large, it is difficult to make the sheep uniform. It often happens that people don’t know whether it is “people herding sheep” or “sheep walking people”. And we all know that the United States is not only a big country in agriculture and animal husbandry, but also a country with a high degree of mechanization. Professional robots are responsible for planting, picking, and weeding. Faced with this situation, they are naturally not to be outdone. In order to better free their hands, they also designed a “sheep-herding artifact” that can replace artificial labor. This sheep-herding machine is the Boston Robot Dog. Its shape is somewhat similar to that of a dog, with slender and powerful limbs and a slender body. The overall weight is about 49kg to 59kg. The load capacity is around 14kg.
This machine is not only similar in appearance to a dog, but also very similar in behavior to a dog. It can recognize the way and turn over, and is very dexterous. The solid shell also makes this Robot wear-resistant and durable. It is a pure electric Robot with a battery life of about 90 minutes.
With this sheep-herding artifact, the entire sheep-herding process does not require manual intervention and can be fully automated. Let’s take a look at how it is done next! First of all, they carefully circumvent obstacles, flexibly go up and down hills, adjust their routes at any time, and reach their destination in the shortest time. These rely on infrared cameras and lidars mounted on their heads. As they go along, they can use lidar for modeling and mapping. In this way, they can plan a suitable route even in the face of rough and complex terrain. The infrared camera can scan the surrounding environment, generate a real-time map, and feed it back to the control terminal. In this way, the farm owner can understand the location of the mechanical dog and assign various tasks to the mechanical dog. Moreover, the robot dog is also equipped with sensors, which can accurately capture the changes in the environment. These sensors help the robot dog to make the most reasonable treatment of the flock in different situations.
Surprisingly, the sheep are also very well-behaved under the management of the mechanical dog. The mechanical dog can even cooperate with the sheepdog to drive the sheep from one side of the pasture to the other. A robotic dog manages more than 100 sheep without stress. Compared with sheepdogs, mechanical dogs neither need to eat nor special training. Just enough power.
Some people say that just by pressing the switch, there is such a professional mechanical dog to herd sheep, which is a good helper for human beings. However, some people said that there are still many problems with this machine, the more obvious one is that the battery life is too weak. Others believe that the investment cost of the mechanical dog is not proportional to the return. What do you think about this? If one day my country also introduces a large number of such mechanical dogs, will it save time and effort for sheep herding?
The Links: 3HAC032586-001 3HAC022194-001
