Most people would be familiar with the astonishing and even disturbing advancements in robotics over the last few years, notably the walking dog-like robot seen in films made by Boston Dynamics. Luxury hotels are starting to regularly use robots to guide you to your room after checkout.

The latest advancements are making robots better at imitating human-like movements, invoking the ‘Uncanny Valley’ effect where robots evoke fear of being too similar to humans. Some may envision scenarios similar to the ‘Terminator’ films or similar science fiction ideas where robots take over from their human masters.

A much less frightening and more local application for robots is on dairy farms, with Camden-based group Future Dairy developing robots that can replace humans for many tasks.

Future Dairy is based out of the University of Sydney’s Camden campus and is focused on its Automatic Milking Systems, which includes single box robots, multibox robots and is the only dairy robotic system in the world that can replace the process of humans fetching the cows and for onsite supervision.

Future Dairy has been active for 20 years and in 2013 it conducted an in-paddock experiment in Kiama by herding cows using a robot. The Dairy Research Foundation at its Symposium held at the Kiama Pavilion on 4 and 5 July 2013 demonstrated Rover the robot, a wheeled unmanned ground vehicle which successfully herded cows out of the paddock to milking.

Dairy Researcher Associate Professor Kendra Kerrisk said at the time: “They weren’t at all fazed by it and the herding process was very calm and effective.” 

The main problem Rover had was negotiating the terrain (a problem that could be solved if it had legs). 

Also in 2013, Kiama Primary School students were one of the first to remotely view the National Museum of Australia using telepresence to control a robot’s movements and camera from a computer in Kiama. Robotic competitions have been held at the University of Wollongong since 2010.

Dr Kerrisk said “its programming would have to be customised for dairying applications.”

However, Future Dairy lost funding this year and is now replaced by Dairy Up, a more generalised dairy research program with 20 different areas of research.

Now at the end of 2023, and ten years later, robotics has advanced by leaps and bounds, and has reached the point where some robots can perform tasks requiring fine motor skills as easily as a human.

Swiss Robotics Day is held every 3 November in Zurich. Swiss company Robotic Systems Lab is the main European rival to the much more well-known Boston Dynamics. The Swiss Robot called ANYmal looks like a dog on wheels, but it has the additional capability to stand and use its forelimbs for manipulation tasks, such as opening a door. Robotic Systems Lab has developed one robot that can stand and use its front legs as hands for such balancing tasks as opening doors and even catching a package and placing it in a receptacle.

One hopes as the whole world starts to feel like the world science fiction predicted for so many decades, we keep in mind not to lose our own sense of humanity.