If you are motoring along a highway in the near future you may find yourself confronted by a rather unusual sight. Lane markers moving themselves, as if by magic, into place to close off or open up a lane. These robot lane markers have been developed by Shane Farritor, a roboticist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

They consist of a "shepherd" lane marker who contains a GPS and communicates with a laptop. The laptop provides the GPS coordinates of the location of the first marker. The shepherd lane marker then takes responsibility for placing his sheep along the road. The sheep use much simpler and cheaper technology, making the whole system much more affordable.

The principle benefits of the system are a more rapid deployment and collection of road markers because the normal issues of the safety of the workers placing the road markers has been removed. The controller can simply indicate via the laptop where the road markers are to be placed and leave the shepherd road marker to complete the task.

Read more in New Scientist.