HE WILL not have to watch his weight. He will not fear a fall. He cannot be exploited. And camel-racing enthusiasts in Qatar are said to have been impressed by robo-jockey’s first trial run.

The robotic jockey is now set to replace his flesh-and-blood equivalent after the Government announced this week that it was banning child jockeys.

The sport, a favourite in the Gulf region, has faced widespread criticism from human rights organisations. Most of the jockeys used are children brought in mainly from the Indian sub-continent. Many of them are said to have been kidnapped or bought from desperate parents by unscrupulous traffickers, and there are allegations that they face exploitation and virtual slavery.

The remote-controlled jockey, which costs just under $5,500 (£2,850), is being developed by a Swiss firm at a cost of $1.37 million in an experiment sponsored by the Qatari Government, which has the property rights.

The device, made of titan-ium, is designed to look like a small human armed with an electronic whip. It is controlled from the touchlines by an armchair jockey manning a joystick and computer screen.

More sophisticated models will be equipped with cameras in their eye sockets that will transmit a jockey’s-eye view of the racetrack back to the controller. An earlier, more rudimentary version was said to have been a great success when it was used in a trial several months ago.

To ensure the robotic jockeys are widely used, the organising committee of camel races is buying 100 of the devices and will rent them out at prices subsidised by the Government. Rich racing enthusiasts are likely to invest heavily in upgrading the robots to secure an advantage over their competitors.

“It is a novel technological idea,” a Western diplomat in Doha, the Qatari capital, said. “Qatar is trying to present itself as a leader in all fields and they are willing to give things a go. They have so much money.”

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Faisal al-Thani, the committee’s president, said that the drive to replace humans with machines was not in response to protests by human rights groups at the exploitation of child jockeys. He said that Qatar had never abused child camel jockeys, who were Sudanese that had entered the country legally accompanied by their parents or guardians.

He welcomed this week’s Cabinet decision to ban the bringing, hiring and training of children in camel races.

It was a “sound decision . . . especially as we are in the last phase of readying the robot jockey”, he said, adding that it was in line with Qatar’s moves to entrench a culture of human rights.

The Qatari Government did not specify the age under which children would be excluded from the sport, but an official said this year that a Bill was being drafted that would ban hiring people under the age of 18.

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