As they are still peaceful and have not conquered humanity, robots are vacuuming houses these days, helping in agriculture and various forms of industry.
However, robots could soon appear on pastures as well. First on Serbian, and then on other meadows in the world.
Experts from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Nis and the Belgrade company "Kaming", in Serbia, made a prototype of a robot shepherd. It was patented according to the idea of Dusan Krstic from Nis with the financial support of the Fund for Innovation Activity of Serbia. Pasture robots could soon become commonplace.
A robot shepherd consists of at least four robotic units connected by a wire through which a low voltage current passes. All this makes a movable fence whose width can be adjusted and which is controlled by a remote control ...
"The system can be used by only one farmer who only introduces animals to the fence and can very easily, with the help of a mobile application on the phone, tablet or computer, set the place where the system should come and how the system will behave in that environment." In addition, the farmer has constant supervision over the animals through a built-in camera system ", explains Milan Banic, technical manager of the project.
The prototype was made as part of an innovation project within the Science and Economy Cooperation program.
Student Lazar Stojanovic was in charge of electronics, to control the robot and to make a program for it.
"There is no solution like this in the world. In addition to raising sheep, cows and pigs outdoors, we increase the number of heads and so on. Definitely, those animals are also protected from predators ", pointed out Ivan Simonovic, the president of" Kaming Computer Engineering ".
With a robot guarding them, the sheep would feed more naturally
The robot shepherd was tested in a natural environment, where he had the task of guarding a flock of 360 sheep.
"They worked on it for several months, let the sheep go, improved it, supplemented the shortcomings, and in the end it turned out that it could really keep the sheep," says Petar Bogdanovic.
According to statistics, in the last decade, the livestock in the district in Nis has dropped by 25 to 30 percent every year, and experts say that one of the main reasons for this is the extinction of the village, but also labor shortage
A robot shepherd would allow the animals to be more on a natural diet, so we would have healthier food. In order for this system to be fully implemented, more training is needed and companies that would invest in production.
will the robot be in the shape of a dog ??? dogs are excellent shepherds