CNN’s Lynda Kinkade reports on how researchers in Australia are hoping to use cutting-edge technology to make cattle farming more efficient and environmentally friendly.

Council of the City of Sydney

The release of Open AI's ChatGPT has accelerated the development of artificial intelligence and warnings about its impact on society.

Rise of AI

The University of Sydney in Australia is pioneering a novel approach to cattle farming, utilizing an AI-powered robot known as Swagbot. Designed to assist cattle farmers, this innovative technology aims to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of livestock management. The bright red, cow-sized robot comes equipped with sensors and artificial intelligence, enabling it to monitor the gait and health of individual animals as well as manage herd movements.

Swagbot's capabilities extend beyond simple herding, incorporating environmental monitoring to optimize pasture usage. By guiding cattle to specific areas with optimal nutrition levels, Swagbot helps prevent overgrazing that can degrade pastures. This approach aims to address a significant challenge in Australia, a leading beef producer, where maintaining pasture quality is crucial due to existing environmental conditions.

In addition to herd management, the intelligent robot has the capacity to measure the quality of pasture and animal movements, thus providing valuable data on herd characteristics and individual animal health. As the global population grows and land resources remain stagnant, precision agriculture and technologies like Swagbot offer a pathway to maximize food production efficiently. The researchers highlight this advanced robotic solution as essential for sustainable agricultural systems that can meet increasing food demands.



AI powered ‘smart cow’ to help ranchers

Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia are working on building the world's first smart cow. They believe their AI-powered robot will help cattle farmers keep their fields green and their herds healthy. Linda Kincaid shows us how. It's not something you see every day, a bright red cow-sized robot against a green backdrop of rolling pastures. But despite looking out of place, Swagbot is the field worker of the future. Once the animals, once the cattle are used to the robot, they will follow the robot around. And so if you move to certain parts of the pasture, the animals will follow through. And if you stop, then they'll stop and they can graze that particular part. And why that's important is because if you overgraze, then you ruin the pasture. And so you don't want to overgraze. So you want to move the animals to the right part of the pasture where there's good protein, good carbs. When it was launched in 2016, Swagbot's only job was herding cattle. Now sensors and AI give the smart cow the power to do much more. You can actually measure the property of the animal's motion as it's moving along, so what we call its gait, so how it's actually moving. And if you measure that information over a number of different days, you start to build up a characteristic profile of that animal. And from that, you can determine whether or not the animal is healthy or not healthy on a particular point in time along that path. But also we can sense a collection of animals and where they're moving as a herd. And that tells us also information about the herd characteristics. And why those two things are important is that if the robot's going around and measuring pasture and measuring quality of pasture, it can actually determine where the best part of the land is for the animals to move to. Australia is a top global producer of beef, but overgrazing can hurt already poor pastures. Swagbot's creators hope to eliminate that issue. The population of the world is growing and we have the same amount of land to feed that population. And so maximising how much food we deliver for the same amount of imports, even less in terms of the imports, is what's important. And the only way we can do that is with precision agriculture. And doing that on such large scales needs robotics.

Russia's Vladimir Putin has rejected President Trump's ultimatum for Moscow to sign a ceasefire deal with Ukraine in the next 50 days. Trump has threatened to issue a 100% tariff on any country that does business with Russia if no ceasefire deal is reached.

Moscow

Ukraine Invasion

Russia rejects Trump's ultimatum for ceasefire in Ukraine

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As Suwayda

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Two laptops and hard drives containing watermarked and unreleased music by Beyoncé were stolen from her choreographer’s rental car in Atlanta, according to police.

Atlanta

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Washington

Anger at House committee hearing on antisemitism in college campuses

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New Delhi

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Jerusalem

Middle East Conflict

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New Jersey

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New York

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Global Tariffs

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Beijing

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Search efforts resumed for the more than 160 people still missing from the deadly July 4 floods in Central Texas after being halted Sunday morning due to renewed flood threats. CBS News' Karen Hua has the latest.

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Following his recent criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump said he plans to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine. Trump, for the first time since he took office in January, is also considering authorizing new funding for Ukraine.

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Two women were killed and two people were injured in a church shooting in Lexington, Kentucky, after the suspect initially shot a state trooper, police said. CBS News correspondent Nicole Valdes has the latest.

Lexington

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The European Union said it would extend its suspension of countermeasures to U.S. tariffs until early August and continue to press for a negotiated settlement, after U.S. President Donald Trump ratcheted up his trade war on the bloc.

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Rise of AI