Camel Jockey Robot: Desert Racing and ABB

A camel jockey robot is a small machine strapped to a racing camel's hump. It holds a whip and the reins, and an owner driving alongside the track steers it by radio. The machine looks like a toy, yet it was built to solve a grim problem: for decades the riders in Gulf camel races were young children. This post covers how the sport worked before the robots, how Qatar and the UAE replaced child riders with machines in the early 2000s, what racing looks like in the 2026 season, and where industrial robot makers such as ABB could, and could not, play a part.

Racing camels with small robot jockeys on their backs kick up sand on the track, 2023. Photo: Houssain tork / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How child riders gave way to robots on the track

Camel racing in the Arabian Peninsula goes back centuries, and for most of that time the riders had to be as light as possible. In the modern Gulf racing scene that meant children, usually boys around four years old. Reports describe boys being starved to keep their weight down, and an active trade in child jockeys, some kidnapped and some sold by destitute families. As international condemnation grew, the countries that ran the richest races came under pressure to act.

Human riders on camels at a race in Ouargla, southern Algeria, in 2007. Photo: Naoll / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The United Arab Emirates moved first. On 29 July 2002 Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan announced a ban on jockeys under 15. Qatar's government had started work on a robotic rider at the start of 2001, and in 2003 Rashid Ali Ibrahim of the Qatar Scientific Club built the first model that worked. At the end of 2003 the design went to the Swiss robotics firm K-Team, where a team led by Alexandre Colot developed it further. In 2005 the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, banned child jockeys and ordered that all races use robots by 2007.

A row of early robot jockeys with helmet heads waiting beside a camel track in Dubai, 2006. Photo: Lars Plougmann / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The hardest early problem was the camels. Animals trained with human riders were confused or scared by a box on their backs, so the designers added mannequin faces, sunglasses, hats, racing silks and even the perfume human jockeys used to wear. The early Swiss robots had an aluminium frame and a control box about the size of a large book, which drove the whip and rein arms. They weighed 16 to 18 kg and cost a lot, so local builders in Qatar and the UAE replaced them with cheaper models of only 2 to 3 kg.

Testing robot jockeys on camels at a Dubai racetrack in 2006, with the city skyline behind. Photo: Lars Plougmann / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Racing season 2026 and where a camel jockey robot stands now

The 2026 to 2027 season is under way across the Gulf. Qatar's first local race meeting began at Al Shahaniya in early September, and the final competitions of the 2nd Al Ain Camel Racing Festival ran from 3 to 8 October at the Al Rawda Camel Racetrack in Abu Dhabi. The Abu Dhabi Media Office listed 150 races in the finals, with a sword and AED 1 million for the winner of the Houl Open race. In a Gulf News opinion piece on 6 September, Alya Hassan Al Yassi wrote about camel racing, now on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, as a tradition that technology is carrying forward.

Camels with robot jockeys run toward the camera at a race in 2023. Photo: Houssain tork / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

On race day each camel carries a small robot, and its owner or trainer follows in an SUV on a road beside the track, working the whip and reins by remote control. Later designs added two way radio and mobile network control. A 2025 study from United Arab Emirates University, based on interviews with 21 Emirati camel owners, found that robotic jockeys, biometric monitoring and GPS tracking have changed training and competition and made the sport a tightly regulated, technology driven industry. Our post on robot horse riding looks at the reverse case, machines that people ride.

A camel carrying a robotic jockey in striped silks at Al Shahaniya Racetrack, Qatar. Photo: Alex Sergeev / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB does not make camel jockey robots, and we found no ABB project in camel racing. Local workshops build the robots as small, cheap devices. ABB robots could help if someone wanted to make them in larger numbers and test them properly. A SWIFTI CRB 1100 cobot or a GoFa CRB 15000 could screw control boxes together or wire small actuators at a bench beside a technician. A test rig built around an industrial arm could shake and swing a finished jockey thousands of times, copying the ride on a camel's hump before the unit goes to the track.

An engineer programs an ABB SWIFTI CRB 1100 cobot with a tablet at a small workshop bench. Photo: ABB

Lighter, smarter riders and the problems still open

Since 2005 the robots have only got smaller, dropping from 16 kg to 2 or 3 kg, and owners now pair them with biometric monitoring and GPS tracking. More sensing seems the likely next step, with heart rate, speed and position sent to the owner's phone and data that helps trainers plan workouts. The UAE University study says this kind of data is already changing the sport. Electronics on the track also have to survive heat and fine dust. Factory robots face the same thing in foundries, and ABB sells sealed versions such as the IRB 1300 with Foundry Plus 2 protection for that kind of work.

An ABB IRB 1300 with Foundry Plus 2 protection, built to handle water and dust. Photo: ABB

Welfare and fairness are still open questions. Anti-Slavery International volunteers photographed violations of the UAE child jockey ban in 2010, so enforcement still matters. Robots raise welfare questions of their own, such as how hard and how often a remote whip may be used, and organisers have to set those rules and check them. When the first robots arrived, one UAE camel farm owner showed Gulf News a robot whose whip was driven by a drill and called it "a remote control car, not a jockey". Builders have had to earn owners' trust since then.

Camels racing down the Al Shahaniya Camel Racetrack in Qatar, 2012. Photo: Lawrence Wang / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Compared with most robots these are cheap, and the market is mostly small local makers. Training those makers in better electronics, sealing and quality checks would make the robots safer for the camels. Engineers who design products like this often simulate the moving parts first, the same way factory cells are planned in RobotStudio. For the sport, the camel jockey robot took children off the track while letting one of the region's oldest traditions carry on.

An engineer programs a robot cell in RobotStudio next to an ABB industrial robot. Photo: ABB

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