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Control of Systems with Natural Mobility
Cow Herding with Virtual Fences
Mobile Computers for Herding Cattle with Virtual Fences Fences on open ranges cost the cattle industry a lot of time and money to install and maintain. Herding cattle also involves much time and effort. A collaboration between Daniela Rus, the CSIRO Robotics Team in Australia and a USDA Ranch Management Research Animal Scientist was initiated at Dartmouth to consider the problem of monitoring and controlling the position of herd animals. The goal is to apply the vast body of theory in robotics and motion planning to virtual fences for controlling animals and to integrate new technologies, such as wireless adhoc networking, into a field where technology has yet had little penetration. Similar to the "invisible fence" products sold for fencing pets in the yard at home, a virtual fence is a collar or tag worn by an animal which tracks its location via GPS and applies a stimulus to the animal to control its motion. Animals are not robots and their unpredictable reactions mean that existing robotics motion control solutions must be modified to take into account the imprecise control before they can be useful.
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