Robot Driving Ducks
Oh how the tables have turned: All this time animals have been driving robots, but here is a case of a robot driving the animals instead. Specifically, a small Roomba-esque machine is driving a flock of ducks. Known as the Robot Sheepdog, this project was part of the PhD thesis for engineer Richard Vaughan from the University of Oxford back in 1998.
You might be wondering why a robot sheepdog is maneuvering some ducks. It's simply because the researchers felt that sheep might be too big a hurdle to properly simulate at the time. As biological sheepdogs are first trained with ducks, these fowl seemed the perfect first step. The robot was able to watch the ducks with a camera and, using a mathematical model of their behavior, herd them with relative ease.
Video: Richard Vaughn/Youtube