The Story Behind the Robot Camel Jockeys …
Posted on November 1st, 2005 by admin in Latest News
… or, "How Robots are Freeing Slaves." Every once in a while you get a story that’s both amazing and powerful. The story of how K-Team Robotics,
a Swiss company, designed and built robot camel jockeys for Quatar, is
one of those stories. You see, up until recently, small children were
pressed into slavery to ride the camels."For as long as anyone can remember, the solution was to use child jockeys – not adolescents, but little boys as young as 4, hustled in from poorer countries like Sudan and kept in hovels in the desert where they did nothing but ride camels."
Under world-wide pressure, the Quatari government decided it had to do away with the practice, and thus arose the robots. Each one stand about 2 ft high and runs Linux on a 400 MHz processor. The camel position (via GPS) and vitals are then transmitted back to the owner/"driver" who can manipulate the whip and reigns via remote control.
Of course, all of this pays off handsomely for K-Team, "If all goes as planned, there eventually could be 2,000 K-Team jockeys in the Gulf states, potentially creating a $20 million payday, more than four times the company’s annual revenue."
It’s a very interesting story. WIRED did an excellent job.
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