Camel-riding robot jockeys

David Pescovitz 8:59 am Fri Jul 22, 2005

A camel race was run in Abu Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Monday, but instead of humans jockeys the animals were mounted by remote-controlled robots. From New Scientist:

The robots were developed after the United Arab Emirates Camel Racing Association banned the use of jockeys under the age of 16 in March 2004. The age limit for jockeys was increased to 18 in July 2005….

An unnamed Swiss company has reportedly been paid $1.3m to develop the robotic jockeys, which are sold for around $5500 each. The first trials involving the riders took place in April 2005.

The remote-controlled riders have mechanical legs for balancing or leaning and mechanical arms for pulling on their camel's reins.

UPDATE: According to Cory's post last year, robots jockeys are already used in Qatar for camel races. Link

UPDATE: Manish Vij points to his blog post outlining the brutality surrounding the child jockey scene in the Persian Gulf states. Hopefully, the use of robots will help improve things. Link

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