A new robot can herd animals on its own

The possibility that the impending robot revolution could well take most of the jobs away from humanity, leaving us as empty, directionless husks as we search for meaning in a world without toil has been widely discussed and debated. But it looks like it might be worse than we feared: Even our dogs are going to lose their jobs. Researchers from the University of Sydney and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics are working on a new robot that can monitor and herd farm animals, and keep an eye on farmers' crops, entirely on its own, according to Smithsonian Magazine. They recently put the bot through a series of tests on a farm, including running it over rough terrain and through streams, and herding cows and horses, to see if it could stand up to the task of working on its own on a farm. The jauntily named SwagBot was designed by the researchers to aid ranchers in some of Australia's more remote areas, where towns and neighbors can be hours apart, to herd livestock more effectively.