Meet SwagBot, the AI-powered robot cattle herder preventing soil degradation

By Cordelia Hsu

CANBERRA (Reuters) - With four wheels and a bright red paint job, SwagBot is not your average cow.

But researchers at the University of Sydney say this autonomous robot is on its way to becoming the world's first 'smart cow', able to make cattle farming more efficient and environmentally friendly.

First launched in 2016 as a simple herding robot capable of traversing rugged terrain, SwagBot has been updated with sensors, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning systems.

The battery-powered SwagBot can now determine the health, type and density of pasture and monitor the health of livestock.

It then uses this information to autonomously herd cattle to the best pastures and move them before land is overgrazed and soil becomes degraded. It can also feed data back to farmers.

"Once the cattle are used to the robot, they will follow the robot around," said University of Sydney professor of robotics and intelligent systems, Salah Sukkarieh, whose team made SwagBot.

"You want to move the animals to the right part of the pasture where there is good protein, good carbs," he said. "You want to be able to do that in a very fluid manner without fences."

Australia is one of the world's biggest beef exporters, with around 30 million cattle spread across a vast landscape that is often dry and whose pastures can be poor.

Farmers constantly assess how many animals their land can support but many have little control over where the animals graze within large enclosed areas. Overgrazing can lead to poorer soils that support less plant and animal life.

"It (SwagBot) allows us to assess our paddocks in real time in a much more detailed way," said Erin O'Neill, a part-time farmer who attended a recent demonstration of the robot in a field north of Sydney.

"That allows us to know what bits of pasture are most nutritious, particularly if you've got cattle like we do that are pregnant and therefore need a higher quality pasture to aid them through that pregnancy," she said.

SwagBot, which is still in development, is part of a growing trend in agriculture towards robotics that can make production more efficient and reduce reliance on workers in places such as Australia where hiring people in remote locations can be difficult.

(Reporting by Cordelia Hsu, editing by Peter Hobson and Lincoln Feast.)