Cargill Tests Robotic Cattle Driver As A Way To Improve Worker Safety

Brad Churchill, a slaughter operations manager at Cargill Meat Solutions, has worked in the cattle industry for more than 30 years — and has seen many employee injuries caused by livestock.

"A young man did nothing to provoke this 1,600-pound Angus steer who turned on him in an instant," Churchill said of one incident last year. The man crawled through an escape hatch, and ended up with a dislocated shoulder and few fractured ribs.

Working with cattle is dangerous: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2017, cattle injured 1,360 workers. And those attacks can sometimes be fatal.

So, when Churchill first saw a video of a robot, developed by a Russian tech company for security purposes, it gave him an idea.

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