Robot Nannies Look After 3 Million Chickens in Coops of the Future

In a nation where food safety is so elusive that even some chicken eggs have been found to be fake, China’s consumers have good reason to be skeptical about their groceries. That’s forced many food processors to look for novel ways to highlight the wholesomeness of their products. But few have gone to such extremes as poultry powerhouse Charoen Pokphand Group, which is deploying a flock of robots to convince customers its birds are healthy.

About 3 million laying hens raised near Beijing by the Bangkok-based conglomerate get daily checkups from machines dubbed “nanny robots.” The sensor-filled humanoids, perched atop a base with wheels, roll through a massive complex of windowless coops for 12 hours a day, monitoring the fowls’ temperatures and movements. Human colleagues pluck feverish or immobile birds from their cages to protect the rest of the brood and keep sick birds and their eggs from reaching kitchen tables.