Robots for Shearing Sheep Shear Magic

This is an account of an extraordinary research project which took robots from their usual structured routines and successfully used them to reproduce the very human skill of sheep shearing. It is a story of immense ingenuity, persistence, planning, occasional luck, and, very importantly, commitment and teamwork. Originally ignored by international experts, the project is now hailed as an example of how versatile robots can be. One of the great lessons of the project was the need for technical experts to communicate effectively with many other people including funding agencies, shearers, farmers, the media, and specialists in different fields. Therefore this book, though written for experts and researchers, uses non-specialist language as much as possible. Technicalities and specialties are carefully explained in separate sections where necessary, so the book can be read by project managers or robotics specialists with equal interest.

James P. Trevelyan is Technical Consultant, Automated Sheep Shearing Project, University of Western Australia. His duties associated with the project have included the extensive documentation and reporting of the work to its sponsors and collaborating experts as it progressed.