Move over sheep-dogs, drones will soon replace you. But, not on cuteness... (via Paul Brennan)
Drones are finding ways to make life easier everyday from delivering your online packages to getting a pizza to your front door. But one sheep farmer has found a different way to use drones to his advantage. Paul Brennan, Irish sheep farmer and drone enthusiast, has discovered that an RC quadcopter can be used to move sheep from one field to another. He calls the drone Shep, the world's first sheep herding drone and it gets the job done.
In video footage, we see sheep fleeing from one end of the field to another trying to get away from the buzzing drone. With the right flightpath Brennan soon leads the sheep to the proper area. This current setup requires a human pilot to fly, but with the advances made to drones on a daily basis it's not hard to imagine this drone herding sheep autonomously. Farmers have also experimented with these machines for other duties, such as monitoring crops and spreading fertilizers and insecticides.
While farmers won't be getting rid of the standard sheep dog anytime soon, computerized aerial shepherding systems could be more efficient than a pack of dogs in the future. With various modifications, such as a GPS, the drones could even be started from a significant distance with just a push of a button. Shep is just one of the many was drones have the ability to revolutionize agriculture and farming to be more efficient.
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