Wired: Robots of Arabia

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/camel.html?pg=2&topic=camel&topic_set=

For their 10 grand, the Qataris will get an aluminum frame on shock absorbers, hinged arms, and, for a thorax, a box about the size of a hardcover book. Inside the box there's a processor, four microcontrollers, and a soundboard. On the racetrack, trainers follow each camel in an SUV, wielding a remote. With a joystick and buttons they can maneuver the whip, striking the camel in front, on the side, or on its flank; control the force of the blow; and spin the whip so it whistles past its ear (a goading action known as khali). With a slider, they can tighten or lengthen the reins; a screen on the remote displays the camel's speed and heart rate, and the life left in the battery.

Still, there are aspects of the design that only this project, in this culture, could inspire. The robot camel jockeys have plastic heads that wear wraparound sunglasses and bicycle helmets. Their features are vaguely childlike, and their skin is an odd orange color - part Swiss, part Arabic, and part Bedouin, or so it seems. Fair enough, but the heads are as empty as a department store dummy's. There are no electronics in there: They exist only to anthropomorphize the robots to the point where the camels - skittish creatures - will accept them.