Robot Jockeys Amuse the Rich

A good article in Christian Science Monitor about the revitalized sport of camel racing by the introduction of robot jockeys.
Before oil, the article says, the owners of the camels would race them. After the money began pouring into the Middle East, the landowners could no longer afford to go outside of their air-conditioned homes. They began buying and selling young boy slaves to ride the camels while they cheered from the sidelines.

Finally someone from the UN told them, look, jockeys are not like camels, you are not allowed to buy and sell them. The sport went into a decline after it was forced underground.

Along came robot jockeys and to bring new life to the pastime. The sheiks can run their jockeys from the luxury of their air-conditioned SUV without the UN breathing down their necks. It turns out that the robot jockeys are much cheaper to maintain too.

From the article:

Races today – typically six miles long – feature parallel tracks. The camels – with robots dressed up in colorful cotton jerseys and jockey caps strapped on – run on the inside racetrack. And the sheikhs , owners, and trainers – piled into four-wheel drive vehicles – follow the races on an outside, paved lane, screeching instructions into the remote controls and pressing the "whip on behind" button like there was no tomorrow.

In other Middle East news...
Foster-Miller and iRobot were showing off the latest models of hazardous duty robots this month. Both the Talon and the Packbot are continuing to get improved skills in finding and disarming bombs and detecting Weapons of Mass Destruction, WMD's.

I think we should just sell the robots to sheiks instead of sending our soldiers. Let them fight their own wars. It would probably be a lot more fun for them anyway. They could chase the robots around in their Mercedes and fight their own battles without ever having to get out of their plush leather interior.


Backstory: Rein of the robo-jockey | csmonitor.com