Sheep+Sheering+Robotics+KS

Sheep sheering is the process in which the sheep wool is removed and in olden days, sheep sheering had to be done physically using a human being. This was hard considering sheep’s move around it is hard to keep their hands and legs stable and in one place. However in today’s world we now have sheep sheering machines that do all the work for us. For example the Oracle robot was a sheep sheering robot was invented in 1979 in Australia. This robot helps keep the sheep’s body in place and it puts his head in a manipulator. This robot can move in many different directions and is powered by a series of different analogue controls. It uses sensors to predict many factors regarding sheep. http://kernow.curtin.edu.au/www/Agrirobot1/oracle.htm http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/ksc/lowres/kscn879l.jpg 2. **How does it work?** 3. The advantages of Sheep Sheering are: - Its accurate – The accuracy of the system helps it be more precise and accurate. Because it holds the sheep’s down in a complete stable position the sheering is done in a more accurate way. - Fast and efficient – it takes shorter time than an actual human being working on it, this will help the sheep as it is done much more quickly. - It is automatically done - The sheep sheering use to be labour intensive, however now with the introduction of this it is now capital intensive. The users of this system are farmers; however they don’t really have a play in this because the machine does all their work for them. The stakeholders who are involved in this are the farmers and the manufacturers of the machine. Farmers can become unemployed because of this machine; this machine brings profit to the company however, this makes farmers jobless. The problems with this are that farmers who aren’t capable or specialized in working in any other area then the farmers cannot play a part in other areas. However, the farmers can learn to use the machine however it is costly and very time consuming. 5. The issues arising with this is that; Reliability issues; the reliability issues that if the machine breaks down than what do them do? As sheep sheering only happens at particular seasons. This is an issue because if the machine breaks down they would have to call farmers in do the work physically. The other issues is that will it be cutting the wool properly because not all sheep’s come in the same sizes and also what happens if the sheeps moves, even if it is in stable position. This can kill the sheep.
 * Background**
 * 1) Who are the Stakeholders involved?