Cargill's beef plant in Schuyler, Nebraska recently welcomed a new co-worker: a remote-controlled, two-armed, bag-waving robot cowboy some are calling R2DMoo.
The silly-sounding robot serves a serious purpose: keeping employees safe. The average bovine that moves through Cargill's beef plant can weigh up to three quarters of a ton, and the plant processes more than 5,000 each day. There are a lot of safety risks attached to these gentle-looking giants.
When moving cattle, workers often wear lacrosse helmets and chest pads. As the herd clears from each pen, the gates closed and the workers move outside a series of rails, waving plastic bags tied to sticks and calling out commands to push the cattle forward until the next gate can be closed.
Workers could potentially be hurt during any point in this process. That's where our friend R2DMoo comes in.
The robot is operated by a worker holding a remote control standing on catwalks that overlook the pens. While people still need to be inside the pens, closing the gates as the cattle travel toward the plant, the robot allows them to keep a greater distance from the animals.
"From a safety standpoint, you don't have to have an individual there pushing cattle forward," the plant's General Manager Sammy Renteria said in a statement. "So if the animal decides to turn, it's not a person hurt. It's just a machine that we can fix."
Using a robot to herd cattle was the brainchild of Brad Churchill, plant operations manager. Right now, the robot is being tested at multiple Cargill beef plants. Churchill believes that this type of innovation could be replicated at other Cargill locations.
The cattle-driving droid isn't Cargill's only attempt to beef up its innovation game. Along with Ecolab, Cargill kickstarted Techstars Farm to Fork – an accelerator for startups in the agriculture technology space. Members of the first Farm to Fork cohort were developing everything from technology that can detect udder infections to software that connects food buyers to farmers. Cargill executives worked with these founders over the course of 12 weeks, helping them further develop their businesses.
Cargill has also previously backed Cainthus, an Irish company developing a facial recognition platform for cows.
