The SwagBot is an all-terrain robot that will soon be running the farm

Sorry, Lassie. Your days as a farmer's best friend may be numbered.

Salah Sukkarieh, a professor of robotics at Sydney University, is the project lead for agricultural robotics at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR). The ACFR, which hosts around 130 researchers and engineers, builds robots for mining and aviation, but it's also looking at how automated systems could assist graziers and farmers.

On June 30, ACFR did its first test of the SwagBot at a farm near Newcastle, Australia. While having little actual swag, the robot could prove extraordinarily useful on cattle farms by potentially herding and monitoring animals, among other tasks. Read more...